California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

It's a Once in 500 Year Flood Implies Things Are Going to Get Better When the Truth is Things Are Going to Get Worse.

by John Lawrence

Climate change and the changes in the weather that that implies are not going to ameliorate any time soon. Why? We are still dumping ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with each succeeding year. What that means is that next year's hurricanes will be even worse than this year's hurricanes, not that "biblical" devastation this year will be followed by 500 years of relative peace and calm. Peoples' mindsets and calculations are severely off if they think that, if they can only see their way clear to rebuilding, they can look forward to an era of peace and prosperity. Just the opposite is true. We have made only paltry efforts at getting climate change under control by eliminating the need for fossil fuels. And also many areas struck by hurricanes this year haven't recovered from last year's hurricanes. People need to make rational decisions about where to live. In light of increased flooding and fires. it makes sense not to live in forested areas or near creeks and rivers. Too many towns, villages and cities are located right on creeks and rivers. These are places to get away from. Also get away from living right on the coasts. Coasts are eroding and houses are falling into the oceans. One needs to consider where to live based on climate change. Certain areas are more vulnerable than others, and it makes no sense to automatically rebuild in vulnerable areas as if that was some gauge of American ingenuity and resolve.

As of 2023, the average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is around 419.3 parts per million (ppm), marking a new record high, with a consistent upward trend observed throughout recent years; this data is based on measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where modern carbon dioxide records began in 1958. Each year the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. In order to get climate change under control, this number should be coming down. According to recent data, approximately 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are entering the atmosphere annually, with this number continuing to rise year after year due to human activities like burning fossil fuels. We are clearly losing the battle, and in fact politicians in the US have given up trying to limit fossil fuel production and use. There will be no limit on how much energy is consumed because this would limit GDP growth, that all important measure that trumps climate change. And the fact is that renewable energy is not coming online faster than the increase in energy demand. Even if all cars were to be converted to all electric vehicles tomorrow, it would increase the demand for electrical energy which only could be supplied by fossil fuels.

Cars could be considered as just another electrical appliance. There are government incentives to convert to all electric appliances whether it be heat pumps or induction stoves. The electrification of appliances will increase the demand for energy. This energy can't be supplied by renewables because there is just not enough renewable capacity. This is the fundamental dilemma in regard to the reduction of the use of fossil duels and consequently the reduction of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. In addition to the technical obstacles limiting our response to climate change, there are the political obstacles. No politician is willing to say that we must do with less in order to fight climate change as we were willing to do, for instance, to fight the Second World War. Telling people to reduce their consumption is a formula for losing political elections. The obvious result is that worsening weather debacles will continue and get worse. Insurance companies will not continue to insure properties located in zones that are subject to weather disasters. FEMA is running out of money. It just does not make any sense to automatically assume that after a disaster, one has to rebuild, that it would be unAmerican not to, a concession of defeat. In many cases it might make more sense to relocate to safer areas. The government could do us all a favor by locating safer living zones and red lining those ares that are prone to climate disasters.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Kamala Flip-Flopped on Fracking

by John Lawrence

Unfortunately, the increase in renewable energy is outpaced by the demand for energy so that under present conditions renewables will never be sufficient to replace fossil fuels. In fact production of fossil fuels will only increase as long as we, as a world, are committed to meeting the demand for energy. Therefore, Kamala, as well as Biden before her, realized that, unless they were going to preach austerity, fossil fuel production needed to be increased not decreased. Fracking produces natural gas which is considered a "cleaner" fossil fuel than coal. The problem is that the continued use of fossil fuels is devastating the environment. It is accelerating climate change. It is accelerating the devastating 1000 year floods which are occurring far more often than 1000 years. It is increasing shore line erosion. It is resulting in year around fire seasons. It is melting glaciers and increasing droughts.

So is there any way out of this dilemma? I think nuclear energy is the only possible way to meet the increasing needs for energy which the people of the earth seems to need and require. Bill Gates has invested in nuclear energy plants. He has broken ground on a novel nuclear power plant in Wyoming. The pilot Natrium nuclear power plant in Kemmerer will be the first of what TerraPower officials hope will be a worldwide fleet of new nuclear energy facilities.

“This reactor exists inside a virtual model, and it’s been working really well inside the computer,” Gates said light-heartedly, eliciting some laughter. “It’s a little bit harder to make it work out there. But that’s what we’re starting on today. This is a big step towards safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy.”

Technically, Gates and others marked the groundbreaking of a liquid sodium testing facility — a critical component of TerraPower’s Natrium nuclear power plant slated to begin operating here in 2030. The event marked what developers, which includes the U.S. Department of Energy, say is the “first advanced nuclear project in the Western Hemisphere to move from design to construction.”

Gates-backed TerraPower touts the Natrium design as part of the industry’s “next generation” strategy to deploy nuclear power throughout the nation and across the globe — a low-carbon alternative for stable electrical generation and a means to address planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions while meeting growing demand for electricity, according to the company.

Rather than the industry’s existing standard of massive nuclear power plants that consume a lot of water, Natrium is much smaller and will use liquid sodium to cool the reactor, which is designed to generate a consistent 345 megawatts of power — enough energy to power about 250,000 homes — with a capability of ramping up to 500 megawatts for short periods, according to the Bellevue, Washington-based TerraPower.

So what's the drawback? It takes money and time to build these nuclear plants. So far even one has barely got off the ground. It won't be operational till 2030!! It would take a massive commitment on a national, even a world wide, level to go this route to provide the energy needs of an increasingly demanding world. As the changing climate is already wreaking havoc all around the world, time is not on the side of human civilization.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Isn't This Election About Climate Change?

by John Lawrence

Climate change is the overwhelming existential issue. Why is it hardly mentioned by Kamala or Trump. Not only does Trump not mention it, he denies it. Kamala like most Democrats takes it seriously, but her campaign hardly mentions it. Why? The American people care more about their individual economic situations than they do about the fate of the planet. There is no other explanation. We should have been doing ten times as much ten years ago to mitigate climate change. At this point the earth is facing a catastrophe in the very near future even though significant efforts are being made to mitigate it at the present time. However, it's not nearly enough. Furthermore, the American people are not even that interested in doing anything about it. If they were, Kamala, at least, would be talking about it and making it part of her campaign. Instead, she hardly mentions it. One can only conclude that, despite local catastrophes for relatively small numbers of people who have lost their homes in fires or floods, the great masses of Americans who have not really suffered have figured that climate change is no big deal as long as some catastrophe has not happened to them personally. This seems to me to be utter selfishnss, ignorance and lack of concern about the commons which is the earth itself. The prevailing attitude seems to be, as long as it doesn't happen to me, I'm not concerned about it. Instead, I will vote strictly on my own individual economic interests.

It is complete foolishness to place individual concerns above the fate of the planet. The implication is that selfish interests of those alive today trump the interests of the next generation and future generations. Americans have been taught to pursue their individual economic interests rather than to be concerned about the economic interest of the commons. We have been taught and it is part of American ideology that individual pursuits are more important than commpn pursuits. In fact common pursuits have been denigrated as socialism or communism. However, the earth and its systems are something that we all depend on. We depend on the fact that temperatures won't rise to 130 degrees F. If they do, individual pursuits will not matter any more except for those whose only interest is to profit off of others' misery. When every rain storm floods out towns and villages, will those not affected just continue to pursue personal profit? When large areas of the world become uninhabitable, will that simply drive up real estate values in the remaining regions? It's happening already. Insurance companies are raising rates in areas that are subject to flooding or fires. The handwriting is on the wall except the American people have blinders on. Some go as far as to insist on gas powered vehicles and complain bitterly if their right to own one were to be taken away.

American voters don't even list climate change as one of their main concerns. Does it even make the top ten? Not according to a Pew survey which rated climate change 18^th!! So are the American people not only completely selfish but also catastrophically ignorant? It would appear so. "There's no excuse for fiddling while the planet burns." So said Tom Steyer, an investor who has devoted his life to fighting climate change,. His book, Cheaper, Faster, Better is out now. What it boils down to is that, although catastrophic climate change is already baked in, we should do everything possible to electrify the planet so that at least some life survives at some level. That's better than throwing up our hands and saying, "Why bother? It's all over anyway."

Off the Top of My Head

Character Assassination: That's What Donald Trump Does Best

by John Lawrence

It's not about what either candidate will put their energy into in order to make the lives of Americans better. It's all about destroying the character of the other party. Has Trump said one thing about what he will try to do to make the lives of average Americans better? Of course not. It's all about him, and he's all about ridiculing and attacking Kamala and Tim Walz. Trump is about stoking hate and fear. Oh, you better be afraid of Kamala and Tim because they are so radical. They're so left wing. They're socialists. So what do those labels actually mean? Nothing. According to Republicans, if you actually want to help people, you're a socialist.So according to them, the best thing for the country is NOT to try and help people. If anything you should give more trillions of dollars to the military and slash taxes for the rich, because, as we all know, it's only the rich that can make the US a better place. Meanwhile, the rest of the civilized world does not only try to make the lives of their people better, they actually care about doing something about climate change which will probably destroy the lives of the next generation if more isn't done about it.

So American democracy is about the candidates propitiating the wants of the least common denominators? Or about electing someone who has successfully assassinated their competitor's character? That's what democracy is all about? And God forbid that a candidate even mentions climate change or that Americans should have to give up their gas guzzling cars, their hamburgers or even their plastic straws. Meanwhile, climate change is already destroying the lives of millions of people and inconveniencing millions more. But "leaders" are still attributing weather disasters to "thousand year" floods. However, thousand year floods are occurring on a yearly basis. Democracy really doesn't work if you have to pander to the least common denominators and they are a bunch of ignoramuses whose only interests are self interest. But that's how Americans have been taught to be - self interested.

Meanwhile, one might think that American elections are all about raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

By law, major presidential candidates in France may not spend more than 22.5 million Euros (about $25 million) on their campaigns. We in the United States have no such limits.

Joe Biden spent $1.6 billion to win the 2020 presidential election. That is 70 times more than Macron spent on his bid, yet the U.S. population is just five times larger than France’s. There is no end in sight to the amount of money in American politics. Biden spent three times more than Hilary Clinton did in 2016. One could argue that the high stakes in the 2020 election justified big spending, but that argument applies equally to France in 2022 when there is a war raging on two NATO borders to its east. The only reason France spends orders of magnitude less than the United States in its elections is because the French have limits.

Not only that, but there are time limits for campaigning in major European countries. In France, the official election campaign usually lasts no more than 2 weeks. In countries which have parliamentary democracies, there is no voting for President. You only vote for members of parliament. This in itself would tend to decrease the division of the electorate into two opposing groups as has happened in the US where the country is divided into two warring camps. In the US all races not only for President but for members of Congress are winner take all. This also tends to divide the electorate into two warring camps. To further exacerbate American elections, we have the antiquated system of the electoral college so that the election for President hinges on the results in just a few battleground states. The Presidential election is not determined by the popular vote resulting in the fact that the US is a democracy only in the minimalist of terms.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not Biden's Job to Reduce Inflation. That's Jerome Powell's Job.

by John Lawrence

Republicans are so stupid. They blame Joe Biden for not doing something that's not his job to do. Furthermore, the way Powell is going about his job requires him to create more unemployment, to reduce economic activity. That's the traditional way to reduce inflation. So getting rid of inflation requires more economic pain not less. Then if there is a recession, they'll blame Joe Biden, not Jerome Powell, for that. As far as house prices being out of sight for more and more people, how about blaming the hedge funds and other entities that are bidding up asset prices. Eventually houses will be unaffordable for the masses of people which will turn the American people into renters and basically debtors. Is that Joe Biden's fault or the fault of hedge finds and other cash flush investors who are entering this market? In fact they are in the process of cornering this market. Higher interest rates are also hurting would be home owners and car buyers. Is that Joe Biden's fault or Jerome Powell's fault for raising interest rates? Joe Biden has no control over interest rates. The American consumer is all about me, me, me not what is best for the country as a whole.

Biden has done more than any President since Lyndon Johnson to improve the economy with the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan and more. Nearly 11 million jobs have been created since President Biden took office – including 750,000 manufacturing jobs. It's the first time the US government has had an industrial policy. He kept the economy afloat during the COVID lock down. The US economy has been left to free enterprise for too long. With deregulation this has allowed corporate entities to pollute, to create dangerous products, to do nothing about carbon dioxide emissions.The government was just supposed to be hands off and let corporations run wild, all in the name of maximizing GDP. Well there are more important things than maximizing GDP like saving the planet from global warming. It is all ready too late to do that. It's only a question at this time of how bad it will get before some of the measures that are being taken today will kick in and save the planet, hopefully, from complete destruction. Each year heat waves and floods are getting more severe. Each year is hotter than the previous year. How important is it to maximize GDP under these conditions?

During World War II, the government made sure that the economy was completely focused on the war effort. Consumer consumption was kept low in order to support the war effort. Today with an even larger danger looming, the economy is going on its merry way with so many elements of it not focused on climate change. In fact I call it the Taylor Swiftization of the economy. Entertainment including professional athletics are very large components of GDP. Nero fiddling while Rome burned is nothing compared to what is happening today. Perhaps the energy going into these frivolous sectors should be refocused on climate change. But the American people don't even all agree that climate change is even a serious situation. They want more fossil fuels, more drilling, more pipelines, more gas production. Fortunately, some states like California are doing more like outlawing gas powered cars by 2035. However, 2035 is too late. Too little, too late is the story of the world's response to climate change. So major disasters will continue with the government's fiscal budget increasingly committed to bailing out these disasters. FEMA, by the way, is bankrupt, and insurance companies no longer want to insure.

Off the Top of My Head

Barbie and Taylor Swift Prop Up US Economy

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve has credited Barbie and Taylor Swift with propping up the US economy. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia announced this month that Taylor Swift's tour helped boost travel and tourism in the region, a claim also made by several other U.S. cities regarding the musician's widely popular concerts. The US consumer is amusing itself to death. Meanwhile, the earth is burning up or in fact boiling. One would think that, if the climate situation were so dire, there would be an 'all hands on deck' effort to fight the war on climate change. But, nope, Americans are propping up the economy and in so doing are contributing even more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere thus hastening rather than retarding climate change. Even as some American cities - namely Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs - are sweltering under temperatures greater than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, even with the handwriting on the wall, Americans are dealing with this crisis by going to the movies and to Taylor Swift concerts. Taylor had better beware that she may get a container of coke thrown at her or even chicken nuggets while she struts about the stage. Cardi B got so mad when a "fan" threw her drink at her that she threw her microphone at the fan.

Newsflash: Americans attending Taylor Swift concerts aren't the same Americans who fought World War II. The era of Americans foregoing consumer delights in order to commit themselves to a long hard slog in the name of world peace, freedom and democracy is over. In fact, politically speaking, a major portion of Americans, not a majority hopefully, would rather be entertained by a clown like Trump than to have to ask themselves what they can do for their country as John F. Kennedy suggested. "Ask not what your country can do for you," Kennedy intoned. Well, that question has been answered. What this country can do for Americans is to provide them with entertainment like Barbie and Taylor Swift. And "what you can do for America" is to go to the movies and attend concerts spending your money in order to keep the economy afloat.

The U.N. chief issued a stark warning on climate change this week: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” António Guterres declared in a news briefing, as scientists confirmed that July is set to become Earth’s hottest month on record. But, boiling or not, most Americans just want to be entertained and to consume all the merchandise that goes with it. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have been moving markets, quite literally. The Federal Reserve has tracked the striking effect of Taylor Swift's tour on host cities. One analysis estimates it could generate almost $5 billion in global revenue. When Beyoncé comes to town, hotels, hair stylists and bartenders all get a boost, according to Yelp. "Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city," the [Federal] reserve wrote in the Beige Book, which is published by the regional banks to share information about the state of the economy.

Have Americans degenerated to the point that when given a choice between letting the earth boil and become unfit for human habitation and entertaining themselves, they would choose to entertain themselves. This is literally "amusing ourselves to death." Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment. Postman was on to something. In the current scenario, though, citizens' responsibilities are being exchanged for consumers' entertainment. In America, as we have been promised, our only responsibility is to enjoy our freedom even if that means that we succumb to the future of a boiling earth.

A Grim Climate Lesson From the Canadian Wildfires

Ibrahim Rayintakath

For all our plans to control emissions, humans are no longer fully in charge

By David Wallace-Wells Opinion Writer, New York Times, July 26, @023

You may have forgotten about the Canadian wildfires, once the smoke cleared from your American lungs and the orange disappeared from American skies. But the fires have not forgotten to burn.

In Quebec, more land was torched in the month of June than in the previous 20 years combined, with a single out-of-control “complex” there growing to 2.5 million acres — in a section of the province where, in recent years, the average total has been a tenth of that. Across the country as a whole, the total was more than 25 million acres, or about two and a half times as much land as had burned in any of the worst American seasons of the past 50 years, with most of Canada’s fire season still ahead — putting the country on track to produce more carbon emissions from the burning of boreal forest than all of its other human and industrial activities combined.

“This year is different — this year is really different,” the ecologist Merritt Turetsky says. The fire scientist John Abatzoglou calls it already “chart redefining.” The writer John Vaillant — whose new book, “Fire Weather,” looks back at the catastrophic Fort McMurray fire in 2016 and forward to an entirely new global fire regime — calls it an “apocalyptic” scenario. “I never imagined pan-Canadian fires,” he says. “We’ve compressed about 10 years of anticipated fire into one-half of a fire season.”

Believe it or not, this is somewhat by design. Nowadays, the goal of most forest management in North America is to manage fire rather than always rush to extinguish it, to focus suppression efforts around denser human settlement and elsewhere to find ways to allow some burning. In the 20th-century model, firefighters parachuted in to snuff out flames, ultimately contributing to a continental buildup of the dry forest, grassland and scrub that fire experts casually call “fuel.” Now, to reduce it, fire scientists and forest ecologists try to cultivate more of what they call “good fire.”

But whose responsibility is the carbon produced when forests burn? In the age of extreme weather and climate agreements, the world has learned to tabulate ecological guilt nation by nation — cutting responsibility for the current crisis into so many slices of pie. Wildfire emissions typically aren’t even recorded on the balance sheet of any particular country’s ledger, but according to some tabulations, in 2021 wildfires in North America and Eurasia contributed more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than any nation but China, the United States and India. And the toxic smoke exhaled from those fires increasingly travels elsewhere too, now regularly choking the air and blotting out the sun not just of cities built into nearby wildland but of major concrete megalopolises whole continents — or even oceans — away. Whose responsibility is that?

If the 20th century taught us the perversity of aggressive fire suppression, the 21st is already teaching us the limits of that lesson. A firefighting approach based on the principle that humans and human settlements should be protected but that otherwise forests should be allowed to burn is sensible if the aim is to reduce property damage and loss of life. But if the costs to human health of wildfire smoke are larger than from the fires themselves, should the goal be recalibrated? Could it be? If the aim is to manage the health of the planet by limiting the emission of carbon from wildfire, what kind of approach does that require? Is it even possible? In California, the record-setting fire season of 2020, which produced five of the state’s seven largest fires in modern history, also entirely erased its emissions gains over the previous 16 years — putting twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as had been saved by all of the state’s decarbonization policies from 2003 to 2019.

Canada has a gargantuan per-capita carbon footprint, in fact by some measures larger than that of the United States. But it is not itself singularly to blame for the changes unfurling in its own remote forests or capable of truly controlling the new megafires that result.

Partly this is a simple matter of scale: Canada is the world’s second-largest country, with a population roughly a quarter the size of Russia, which Americans often conceive as a vast expanse of uninhabited tundra. The 49th parallel is often thought of as Canada’s southern boundary, but half of Canadians live south of it, clustered just in the little outcropping wedge of Ontario and Quebec tucked between Michigan and Maine. All told, it’s estimated that 85 percent of Canadians live within 150 miles of the U.S. border — as though 284 million Americans all lived south of Los Angeles and Tampa, with the whole rest of the country untrammeled wilderness effectively left free to burn anytime lightning struck or a match was dropped or a power line fell.

But fire control is also growing harder because the fires themselves are changing. They produce such thick walls of smoke now that tanker planes sometimes can’t fly into them; they throw embers over what were once considered uncrossable fire breaks; they burn and smolder underground through winter; they get so hot that firefighters risk second-degree burns just approaching them. “The most powerful firefighting equipment that humans have — Canadair planes that cost roughly $35 million each and drop 30 bathtubs’ worth of water at a time — can extinguish fires with an intensity of up to 10,000 kilowatts per meter of fire line,” Henry Mance wrote recently in The Financial Times. “Today’s mega-fires are a different order of magnitude, sometimes exceeding 100,000 kilowatts per meter” — 10 times as intense. Water dumped from above can evaporate before it reaches the ground.

The megafires routinely produce whole new fire-weather systems, including what are called pyrocumulonimbus clouds, laced with lightning and whipped by tornadoes, which can shoot toxic aerosols all the way through the troposphere into the lower stratosphere. It was long believed that only volcanic eruptions were capable of doing this. It wasn’t until 1998 that scientists discovered pyrocumulonimbus clouds from megafires doing it too. So far this year in Canada, there have been 90 of them.

“They can’t stop these fires,” says the fire historian Steve Pyne. “I mean, they could have 50,000 firefighters there now and it’s not going to change it. We could have 200 more air tankers. Are they going to be able to stop these fires that are going? No.”

In “Under a White Sky,” the writer Elizabeth Kolbert memorably posed the paradox of climate adaptation, in which the disruption of the natural world seems to require further interventions, this way: “If there is to be an answer to the problem of control, it’s going to be more control.” But the specter of hundreds of new fires raging near the Canadian Arctic — or in Russian Siberia or the Australian bush — is a reminder that when it comes to rolling climate change, total control, at least, may be an illusion, although one on which we have intuitively erected our hopes for navigating a hotter future.

“Humans have always moved at a different pace than the natural world,” Vaillant says. “But suddenly there’s a syncing up, with the natural world now moving as fast or faster than we are — faster than humans, faster than technology, faster than history.” In the past, he says, “we’ve had a ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ attitude with nature — when it did things that we didn’t like, we suppressed them. Fire is now forcing us to negotiate.”

Negotiate with whom, though? In recent years, warming posed a number of thorny questions about responsibility and sovereignty in a time of planetary crisis: who might pay for climate damages punishing the global South but produced by emissions from the global North; how a net-zero world might respond to a rogue nation’s recklessly burning fossil fuels; what could prevent single nations from undertaking adaptations that might wreck the microclimate of their neighbors; what damage could be wrought by a single billionaire’s undertaking a global geoengineering scheme or a single terrorist cell torpedoing it.

These climate morality plays flatter our intuitive sense that humans, however irresponsible, remain in charge. But while emissions do control the planet’s thermometer, the natural world is already bushwhacking its own path through the hotter future. “We’re riding the tiger at this point,” Pyne says. “I think all of us are going to have to accept there’s going to be a lot more fire.”

Off the Top of My Head

While Earthlings Argue Over Abortion, Planet Earth Is in the Process of Aborting the Whole Human Race

by John Lawrence

While we spend major amounts of energy going back and forth over abortion, books in libraries and who can use which bathrooms, the planet is warming beyond what humans as a species can endure. Floridians carefully labeled the recent flood in Fort Lauderdale a "1000 year flood" instead of a "global warming flood". People talk about rebuilding instead of getting the hell out of low lying regions. Disaster areas are declared right and left with the Federal government expected to send them billions of dollars. How stupid we earthlings are or put another way what tangled webs we weave. The Arctic permafrost is melting with the result that methane, a more potent greenouse gas than carbon dioxide, is bubbling up and going into the atmosphere. As the Arctic warms, methane that has been locked in permafrost for thousands of years escapes and can explode. Released methane that finds its way to the surface contributes to the greenhouse effect of climate change with even more heat retention capacity than carbon dioxide. Even igniting it doesn’t solve the problem, since that produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Tulare Lake reforms in California turning what once was productive farmland into a massive lake which will only get much bigger as snow in the Sierras melts. The Washington Post reports:

California’s historic snowpack has started to melt following its warmest days of the year so far, with the communities and valleys below the mountains bracing for the impact of any flooding as all that water makes its way downhill. The severity of any floods will depend on how quickly the snow melts, but as officials share the latest outlook, it’s clear the highest risk stems from the record snowpack in the southern Sierra Nevada.

An enormous volume of water is expected to flow into rivers and streams through the spring and summer. The epicenter of flood concerns lies in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Basin to the west of the southern Sierra, as well as the valleys to the east of the mountain range.

Two rivers in the Tulare Lake region — the Tule and the Kern — are forecast to exceed 400 percent of their average runoff between April and July. The majority of the watersheds are forecast to reach peak water flow in May, though they’ll reach their highest flows at different times. A few rivers, including the San Joaquin River, will see sustained high flows through at least June because of prolonged snowmelt — much later than typical peak-flow timing of April or May for southern watersheds.

So, California, get ready for historic flooding as the snowpack in the Sierras exceeds 200% above normal. Just last year it was zip. People were praying for more snowpack in the Sierras which, if melting gradually, could fill California reservoirs and provide much needed water throughout the year. However, if it melts too fast, the result will be not more water for drinking and agriculture but historic flooding, and that's the more likely result as higher than normal temperatures start the snowpack melting sooner and faster. The year 2022 was the sixth warmest year since global records began in 1880 at 0.86°C (1.55°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This value is 0.13°C (0.23°F) less than the record set in 2016 and it is only 0.02°C (0.04°F) higher than the last year's (2021) value, which now ranks as the seventh highest. The 10 warmest years in the 143-year record have all occurred since 2010, with the last nine years (2014–2022) ranking as the nine warmest years on record. Of note, the year 2005, which was the first year to set a new global temperature record in the 21st century, currently ties with 2013 as the 11th-warmest year on record. The year 2010, which had surpassed 2005 at the time, now ranks as the 10th-warmest year on record.

So while Americans turn democracy into a travesty of itself with district judges setting national policies, and billionaires pollute the atmosphere with their mega yachts and private jets, the real problems affecting planet earth and human civilization are largely ignored at least partly in the pursuit of profits and a reluctance to give up any perceived privileges that have been established. Despite the large investments in climate change that the Biden administration was lucky enough to get through - not without a lot of resistance by certain segments, I might add - it is just not enough. Airplanes both civilian and military are adding immense quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, as are container ships, without a solution in sight, and, rather than working on a solution, we are pursuing a world war contained within one country at least for now. The human race can not get along even in the face of certain destruction unless an all out effort is made by all nations to get rid of those processes which are releasing gigatons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Off the Top of My Head

Sea Levels to Rise by 200 Feet if Poles Melt

by John Lawrence

Based on 410 ppm which is the concentration of carbon dioxide right now in the atmosphere, the ice on the poles will go completely away albeit at a glacial pace. Concentrations of carbon dioxide have varied between 100 ppm and 300 ppm for hundreds of millions of years, and earth has gone through hot periods in which there was no polar ice and at least one period where the entire earth was encased in ice. Reliable predictions by scientists show that 410 ppm will guarantee the disappearance of ice from the poles and a 200 foot sea level rise which will wipe out most of the east coast including a total disappearance of the state of Florida. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is continuing to increase. It will continue to increase way above the current 410 ppm. Humans are still pouring billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere year after year. There has been no diminution of this trend. In fact it is accelerating. The world emits about 43 billion tons of CO2 a year. So already there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to guarantee that the poles will melt, and the earth will become very hot. And we're still making it worse year after year.

As the oceans warm and the polar ice melts, we are seeing more extreme weather events due to increased water evaporation from the oceans. That increased amount of water in the atmosphere is released in the form of torrential downpours which cause flooding and weather events such as hurricanes. Higher temperatures are also causing droughts and forest fires. Although these events are tragedies for those directly affected, geological history has shown that life can adapt. One of the first major catastrophes the human race will be faced with is the loss of major cities situated close to oceans such as New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Miami and New Orleans. However, humans can adapt to this by just moving further back from the shore lines as sea levels rise wiping out most low lying areas. Of course this will increase anti-immigrant sentiment due to the the number or refugees in the world as humans crowd onto remaining habitable areas. At this stage we will still be better off than Venus which has a runaway greenhouse gas effect and a surface air temperature of 800 degrees F. Its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.

The lesson here is that it is to the advantage of the human race to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as quickly as possible. This means major changes to our civilization which human beings are reluctant to make especially in democracies which are governed by the will of the people. While most will give lip service to preserving the planet for future generations, in fact they don't want to do anything that will change their lifestyles or inconvenience themselves in any way. Only when war and pestilence force humans to diminish their numbers on the planet will the human footprint get down to a certain size which, along with the adoption of renewable energy systems, will allow the planet to sustain enough habitable land mass for the furtherance of human life at least for some people. How fast we proceed with changing the human ecosystem in terms of greenhouse gas reduction will determine what kind of a planet future generations will be forced to live on. At the very least it will resemble a hot house earth, similar to conditions which existed millennia ago in which the polar regions were tropical swamps.

Off the Top of My Head

If the Planet Goes Down, It Will Be Irrelevant Whether a Woman Has the Right to Choose or Not

by John Lawrence

Democrats will fail at codifying Roe vs Wade, but Republicans will succeed in codifying anti-abortion rights if a Republican President is elected in 2024. But that's the least important thing that will happen. If Republicans take over the House and Senate in 2022, and a Republican President is elected in 2024, forget the US and the world doing anything about climate change. It will be full steam ahead for fossil fuels, and full steam ahead for the death of the planet. We don't have that much time any more to prevent irreversible change due to global warming. All the deadlines here have past or soon will be past. The relevant headline is Greenhouse Gases Must Begin to Fall by 2025, Says U.N. Climate Report. We are continually being bombarded with political and cultural trivia when the giant in the room is climate change. The prevailing attitude is we'll get around to that eventually, but eventually is almost here, folks. If not much is happening before 2025, we might as well forget it and spend our few remaining years enjoying the human past times of war and trivial pursuits. Eos reported:

"The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report on climate mitigation since the Paris Agreement was released today. This is likely the IPCC’s last word before the window of opportunity to stop warming at 1.5°C disappears, after which scientists said life-threatening climate consequences and feedbacks will intensify.

"Led by hundreds of scientists convened by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, the summary of the report was approved by 195 governments after 16 days of discussions and one 40-hour marathon session that stretched into Sunday night.

"The report gives the world a failing grade. International policies implemented by the end of 2020 will miss the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming well below 2°C. Current trends suggest that by 2100, the world will warm 3.2°C compared to preindustrial average temperature, with a spread of 2.2°C to 3.5°C possible.

"“Reaching 3.2°C will be nightmarish,” said Andrea Simonelli, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the report. “The threshold for habitable is already being pushed to the limit in many places.”"

Despite these dire warnings the human species is still on a binge of colossal pettiness. This means that wars and in particular resource wars will become more severe and common. Already the whole world is in a food crisis due to drought and lack of water for crop irrigation. War also plays a part. Russia and Ukraine together supply more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, and coming disruptions could fuel higher food prices and social unrest. When people start fighting over food, wars will take on proportions that will make the war in Ukraine seem like a minor aberration. Russia and Ukraine together export more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, feeding billions of people in the form of bread, pasta and packaged foods. The countries are also key suppliers of barley, sunflower seed oil and corn, among other products. Food prices have already risen globally as a result of pandemic-related shipping disruptions, rising costs for farmers and adverse weather, and wheat is no exception. Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of wheat increased 80 percent, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. That was on a par with rising costs for corn and higher than increases for soybeans or coffee.

Now we're talking some serious stuff, not just the future of NATO. The brunt of the food crisis just like the brunt of climate change in general will be felt most by the poorer nations. As a consequence, whatever immigration crisis that is being felt today will be magnified 1000 times at least as starving people seek to come across borders not only in the US but all over the world where prosperous nations border on poverty stricken ones. So crises based on real world problems, rather than on national borders between Russia and Ukraine, will become more severe. Already in California, the water supply for crop irrigation is likely to be turned off by 2025 as Lake Mead and Lake Powell go dry. California supplies about a quarter of the US' fruits and vegetables so the American diet is shortly to be seriously affected and not just by supply chain issues. Recently, a fire in Laguna Niguel destroyed 20 multi-million dollar homes on a day that was not particularly windy or hot. One 10,000 square foot mansion recently was on the market for almost $10 million.

They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now the human species is fiddling while the whole damn planet is about to go up in smoke. Oh well, it was a nice planet while it lasted. Scientists assure us that there are trillions of other habitable planets out there, but they're so far away.

The U.S. Drought Monitor

California-Nevada

The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) is updated each Thursday to show the location and intensity of drought across the country. Drought categories show experts’ assessments of conditions related to dryness and drought including observations of how much water is available in streams, lakes, and soils compared to usual for the same time of year. 

California/Nevada conditions as of May 10, 2022:

• 100% of California is experiencing Moderate (D1) to Exceptional (D4) Drought (59.81% in D3, 0% in D4)
• California population in drought: 37,247,852
• 100% of Nevada is experiencing Moderate (D1) to Exceptional (D4) Drought (46.6% in D3, 8.27% in D4)
• Nevada population in drought: 2,700,551

U.S. Drought Monitor Categories

 

D0 - Abnormally Dry

 

D1 - Moderate Drought

 

D2 - Severe Drought

 

D3 - Extreme Drought

 

D4 - Exceptional Drought

U.S. Drought Monitor Categories

Value	Map Hex Color
D0 - Abnormally Dry	#ffff00
D1 - Moderate Drought	#ffcc99
D2 - Severe Drought	#f5ad3d
D3 - Extreme Drought	#ff0000
D4 - Exceptional Drought	#660000

Source(s):

NDMC, NOAA, USDA

Last Updated - 05/10/22

 

 

Main Stats

100%

of California and Nevada are in drought (D1–D4)

59.8%

of California is in extreme (D3) to exceptional (D4) drought

54.9%

of Nevada is in extreme (D3) to exceptional (D4) drought

Current Conditions

• April brought widespread precipitation through the northern parts of the region; however, California and Nevada remain in a third year of drought—with recent expansion of extreme drought (D3) across southern and central California and Nevada, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
• Most of the region has received between 50%–90% of normal precipitation since the start of the 2022 water year (Oct. 1, 2021). The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada has received above-normal precipitation, while Southeastern California and Southern Nevada have received less than 50% of normal precipitation.
• Although parts of northern California and Nevada received above-normal precipitation in April, the amount of missing precipitation since the beginning of the drought, October 2019, did not show meaningful differences between April 1 and May 1. Much of the region is missing over half a year's to a year’s worth of normal precipitation. Parts of Northern California, Southeastern California, and Southern Nevada are missing more precipitation, between 1–1.5 years’ worth.
• Thus far in the 2022 water year, regional evaporative demand ranks toward the middle of the most recent 40 years. However, much higher evaporative demand has occurred in southern Nevada and southeastern California. This is in contrast to Water Year 2021 when evaporative demand was extremely high throughout much of the region. 
• Snow drought improved slightly during April with some cold storms, but continues as many of the stations in California are reporting 0% snow water equivalent (SWE) and Nevada water basins are at or below 75% of normal SWE for this time of year.  
• Current water storage in the Western Sierras, represented here as reservoir plus snowpack, is less than half of the normal storage for this time of year. In Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Lake Mead, and Rye Patch are much below average capacity. 
• NOAA’s National Weather Service California Nevada River Forecast Center is forecasting below-normal streamflow at most locations. 
• Dead fuel moistures status has generally improved since April with much of the region near normal. 
• Lake Powell storage has declined continuously since 2019, and is now below 6 million acre-feet. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is forecasting unregulated flows into Lake Powell at 62% of normal inflow.    
• For more information, check out Living with Drought in Nevada and the California Water Watch.

Off the Top of My Head

Mega Drought Means No More Fruits and Nuts in Califonia

by John Lawrence

California's Central Valley produces 25% of the nation's food, including 40% of the nation's fruits, nuts, and other table foods. In 2010 Bill McKibben wrote, "The federal government says that thirty-six states face water shortages in the next five years, which is bad news for farming, since 70% of the water we use goes for irrigation, and irrigated fields supply as much as 40% of the world's food. ... In California in the spring of 2009, groups of farm workers, many wearing surgical masks against the blowing dust, marched for 4 days to demand the federal government somehow supply them with more water - the year's drought had already cost the state 23,700 jobs and $477 million in revenue. Farmers are already letting orchard trees die for lack of water to keep them alive; in the Central Valley unemployment grew 9.4% in a year through July 2009. "There's no water, so there's not much work," Kiki Torres told a reporter." That was 13 years ago and since then things have only gotten worse. The problem is not only in California but around the world. Since planet earth is warming, not enough snow is falling in the Sierra Nevada mountains which forms most of California's water supply. If precipitation falls as rain, it runs off. When it falls as snow, it forms a snowpack which acts as a reservoir, that gently releases its water in the spring as the snow pack melts. This is as true in the Himalayas and the Andes as it is in the Sierra Nevada. That is why agriculture is under threat world wide, and planet earth is facing a disastrous situation when it comes to the human race being able to feed itself.

Nobel laureate Steven Chu, after being named secretary of energy, told an audience in California, "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. If we don't dramatically slow global warming, the rapid melt of the Sierra snowpack means we're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." Since that speech, not only have we not dramatically slowed global warming, we have accelerated it. In an article, "Megadrought in southwestern North America is region’s driest in at least 1,200 years," Anna Novoselov reported:

"Existing climate models have shown that the current drought would have been dry even without climate change, but not to the same extent. Human-caused climate change is responsible for about 42% of the soil moisture deficit since 2000, the paper found.

"One of the primary reasons climate change is causing more severe droughts is that warmer temperatures are increasing evaporation, which dries out soil and vegetation. From 2000 to 2021, temperatures in the region were 0.91 degrees Celsius (about 1.64 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1950 to 1999.

“Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” Williams said. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s or 1100s.”

"As of Feb. 10 [2022], according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 95% of the Western U.S. was experiencing drought conditions. And in summer 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two of the largest reservoirs in North America — Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River — reached their lowest recorded levels."

The dire predictions of Bill McKibben's 2010 book Eaarth, have only gotten worse since the human race has failed in its responsibility to protect the planet mainly due to a lust for profits. It's the modern day equivalent of the Noah's Ark scenario, only this time the human sins are a reluctance to set the profit motive aside and do what's necessary to make sure that the planet remains a habitable environment. Instead of flooding, the worst effects more likely will be drought and a dwindling food supply. Parched earth cannot produce food. Earth's food supply is dependent on snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada and glaciers in the Himalayas. The warming planet is producing more precipitation but in the form of rain which runs off causing floods in many instances. What we need now is the equivalent of a mega rain barrel to catch the rain, since water is not going to be stored much longer in the form of ice. Snowpacks and glaciers are going the way of the dodo bird which, in case you haven't heard, has gone extinct. In addition to that the parched earth is causing more and larger forest fires which are spewing even more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. But not to worry. In a capitalist economy only the poor will suffer. What little food remains will be bought up by the rich.

The parched earth is also causing more forest fires releasing even more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Forests act as a carbon sink. Forest fires release that carbon. Trees withdraw carbon from the atmosphere and store it. The less trees on earth, the less is the ability of the planet to withdraw greenhouse gasses with the result that global warming is sped up. The Washington Post reported in an article, Massive wildfires helped fuel global forest losses in 2021:

"Unprecedented wildfires raged across Russia in 2021, burning vast swaths of forest, sending smoke as far as the North Pole and unleashing astounding amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

"Logging operations continued. Insect infestations wreaked havoc. The relentless expansion of agriculture, meanwhile, fueled the disappearance of critical tropical forests in Brazil and elsewhere at a rate of 10 soccer fields a minute.

"Around the globe, 2021 brought more devastating losses for the world’s forests, according to a satellite-based survey by the University of Maryland and Global Forest Watch. Earth saw more than 97,500 square miles of tree cover vanish last year, an area roughly the size of Oregon."

It's a feedback loop: less water, more parched earth, more forest fires, more greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere, more global warming, less water. The human race has not proved itself to be that concerned about future generations which might cause it to deny itself whatever pleasures are available to the current generation. Self sacrifice is not the norm. The result is that we are sacrificing future generations and condemning them to a hellish earth.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Coal is So Hard to Get Rid Of

by John Lawrence

To forestall climate change we must get rid of coal yet coal is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy for power generating plants worldwide. China is building coal fired generating plants in India as India develops into a middle class country. As COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it. Millions of tons of coal each year will be imported to fuel a giant power plant that will burn the fuel for at least 30 years to generate power for the more than 70 million people that live in India's Tamil Nadu state. This plant is one of nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia, according to data from U.S. nonprofit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). While the US is primarily responsible for the billions of tons of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere, developing countries don't want to hinder their emerging development since they aren't the ones that contributed most of the CO₂ so far. Asia is home to 60% of the world's population and about half of global manufacturing, and coal's use is growing rather than shrinking as rapidly developing countries seek to meet booming demand for power.

Reuters reported:

"In 2020, more than 35% of the world's power came from coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Roughly 25% came from natural gas, 16% from hydro dams, 10% from nuclear and 12% from renewables like solar and wind. This year, coal demand is set for a new record, driving prices to all-time highs and contributing to a worldwide scramble for fuel.

"Record coal demand is contributing to a rapid rise in emissions in 2021 after a fall last year, when restrictions on movement for billions of people to slow the pandemic caused fuel use to plummet. While some of the new coal plants under construction will replace older, more polluting stations, together they will add to total emissions. "The completion of the capacity that is already under construction in these countries will drive up coal demand and emissions," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air.

"The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the new plants alone will be close to 28 billion tonnes over their 30-year lifespans, according to GEM."

While India will continue to pollute with coal, their emissions will be dwarfed by China, the top global coal miner, consumer and emitter, whose leader, President Xi Jinping, is not expected to attend COP26. More than 1,000 coal plants are in operation, almost 240 planned or already under construction. Together, coal plants in the world's second-largest economy will emit 170 billion tons of carbon in their lifetime - more than all global CO₂ emissions between 2016 and 2020.

The solution is that the advanced countries like the US have to spend the money to rapidly convert Asia's fossil fuel energy plants to non polluters. Wind and solar are not enough to fill the bill. In order to get off fossil fuels quickly, nuclear power is the only feasible solution, and these plants must be funded and constructed in Asia by the US and the European Union. Bill Gates had plans to build an advanced digital nuclear test plant in China which were nixed by the Trump administration which was a global warming denier. What the rest of the developed world worries about is whether or not Trumpism will come back in the next election. If the earth is not to burn up from global warming, cooperation between the US and China is paramount. Yet the Pentagon continues to advocate for a Cold War with China, and even Biden's administration is ready to cast doubts warily on China. Yet there is no other way. We need to take resources away from the US military establishment which wants to keep itself in business by creating the pretext for war with China while turning China and Russia into pariahs and enemies of the western world. This is a huge mistake if we want our grandchildren to live on a habitable and sustainable planet.

Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

Off the Top of My Head

People Will Not Even Get a Vaccination to Fight the Pandemic. Would They Put Up With Rationing to Fight Climate Change?

by John Lawrence

In World War II, Americans sacrificed for the common good. Today some will not even get a free vaccination for the common good. On August 28, 1941, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8875 created the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA’s main responsibility was to place a ceiling on prices of most goods, and to limit consumption by rationing. The OPA rationed automobiles, tires, gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, nylon, silk, and shoes. Americans used their ration cards and stamps to take their meager share of household staples including meat, dairy, coffee, dried fruits, jams, jellies, lard, shortening, and oils. Resources were devoted to the war effort and not to Americans' consumption. Today we live in a consumer society. Would Americans resist if they lost their freedom to consume? That's what freedom means to most Americans. What if those resources were needed in the fight against climate change?

Would Americans put up with a shift from a consumer society to an all hands on deck building infrastructure to mitigate climate change society? Advertising budgets would dry up because the purpose of advertising is to get you to buy more stuff. What if your consumption was limited to essentials as it was during WW II? Freedom in America is the freedom to consume whatever you have the money to buy. What if you couldn't do that any more? What if the purveyors of nonessential products didn't have the freedom to sell you stuff that you really don't need in order to devote resources both human and material to Biden's building back better agenda? Is it some people's right to consume while other people are wiped out due to extreme weather events like fires and flooding? Should the rich be restricted from spending their money on luxury items like private jets and yachts? Should they be taxed heavily to provide the financial resources for mitigation and adaptation to global warming? Would billionaires have to give up their rocket ships? Do thy even care about the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit?

So if people are protesting that getting a free vaccination is against their concept of what being a free American is, how much more are they going to complain if they had to go without some consumer activity that they have become accustomed to? They are just not the type to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to do their part to mitigate or adapt to global warming. Just as the dying unvaccinated finally wish that they had heeded the warnings and got vaccinated, as long as some extreme weather event hasn't destroyed their home or impacted them in any way, they will continue to stick their heads in the sand and deny that global warming really exists. For them it will just be another government conspiracy theory while they will find charlatans in social media who will reassure them that global warming is still a hoax.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump Campaign Rallies COVID Superspreader Events

by John Lawrence, November 2, 2020

A Stanford study concluded that Trump's campaign rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and likely led to more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees. One benefit of the election no matter how it turns out is that Trump will not be holding any more superspreader events thus saving the American public from even more cases and deaths from COVID. Today I will be glued to the tube (except for my 11:15 AM reservation for a lane at the Y pool). This election like no other will set the course for human history on planet Earth. Will we have a humane society or will we have a super narcissistic egotist at the helm? Four more years of Donald Trump will doom the Earth to a fiery and a watery (depending on where you live) demise. The effort to mitigate global warming will be for nought and it will be full steam ahead for the superspreading of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Bishop Gerald Green a 66 year old prominent evengelical pastor in Chesterfield, Virginia, exhorted his congregation on the fourth Sunday in March not to fear the virus. Like many ecumenical leaders, Glenn, a former police officer, didn't heed the advice of Virginia governor Ralph Northam and others who warned against gatherings of more than 10 people. "I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus," Glenn told his parishioners. "If I had to deliver my own eulogy, I'd say, 'God is greater than any challenge you and I face.' That would be my epitaph." Glenn died from COVID-19 three weeks later. His religious faith never appeared to waver, but neither did the deadly resolve of the virus.

I wonder if his preferred epitaph is emblazoned on his gravestone. It seems that Glenn's beliefs about God were somewhat invalid. After all God created viruses as well as every other living being or entity (is the virus a being?) on planet Earth. Perhaps we would be better served by a belief in God that acknowledged that we better take care of the planet or else suffer the fate of extinction as many other animals have. Perhaps God wants us to heed his warnings or else suffer the consequences. So far humans have exploited the planet for profit. We have not been good stewards. Money has been more important than saving the environment. Trump has exemplified this by putting lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. His message is hardly indecipherable: go ahead pollute all you want and maximize your profits. President Trump's first EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, resigned effective July 6, 2018, amid a series of scandals. Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, started serving as Acting Administrator on July 9, 2018. Wheeler was confirmed as EPA Administrator on February 28, 2019.

Before his short stint in the Federal government, Scott Pruitt was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. In that role, he opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations as a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." In his campaigns for Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt received major corporate and employee campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, taking in at least $215,574 between 2010 and 2014 even though he ran unopposed in the latter year. As Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency at least 14 times regarding the agency's actions. In 2012, Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association and re-elected for a second term in February 2013.

How ironic that a pandemic which arguably came about due to environmental degradation was unleashed on a nation the President of which didn't give a damn about the environment, and then President Trump completely mismanaged the response to this pandemic. He doesn't deserve another 4 years as the most powerful man on the planet when he clearly has no regard for the planet. Anyway today's outcome will be known soon enough. The American citizens will decide which road they want to go down, the road of a narcissist who cares about nothing but himself or the road of a man dedicated to making the country and the world a better place.

I voted for Joe Biden. I hope you did too. I think God gave us a brain so that we could figure out the correct way to take care of planet Earth. If we could figure out how to use fossil fuels as an energy source, we are intelligent enough to know when we should stop using them. Instead of a nation led by a self serving President and his cult like followers, I pray we elect a President who is not only religious but compassionate and intelligent.

Off the Top of My Head

All Cars Sold in CA after 2035 Must Be Zero Emission Vehicles

by John Lawrence, September 25, 2020

California's Governor Newsom has issued an executive order mandating that all new car sales by 2035 will be zero emission vehicles. That is they will either be all electric or hydrogen cells. A mandate is one thing. However, the implementation is quite another. He has given this job to the California Air Resources Board. The devil is in the details. The best implementation would be a state ordered straight line reduction starting in 2021 and ending in 2035 which would decrease gas powered car sales in accordance with that line year after year. Otherwise, the whole thing wouldn't amount to much especially if there was no government ordered mandate to reduce cars systematically year over year. More than 1.63 million new cars and trucks are expected to be sold in the state in 2020, according to the California New Car Dealers Association. This makes California one of the world's largest car markets.

The Governor also called on the legislature to ban fracking. Fracking contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as much as oil products since the natural gas the wells produce is 90% methane. Methane is a 40 times more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide. Fracking is only marginally profitable, and many fracking operations go bankrupt with the consequence that the fracking wells are abandoned without proper stoppage. Methane continues to leak from them. The reduction of regulations by the Trump administration has only accelerated this practice so that the fracking operations are not accountable for leakage from their wells. In New Mexico the San Juan Basin was considered a plentiful resource for fracking. But the boom and bust economy has contributed to the fact that many wells are being abandoned. Capital and Main reported:

Right now, there are over 30,000 wells in the San Juan Basin, but only about 20,000 remain active.

“You’re in danger of orphaned and abandoned wells at every level: Your first concern is the small producer who just ducks out, that goes off and abandons their well or takes bankruptcy,” Schreiber said. The BLM and the state of New Mexico require companies to secure bonds to guarantee they’ll comply with regulations, including safely plugging wells once they’re no longer producing.

But Schreiber said the bonds are “wholly inadequate.” They represent just a fraction of what it costs to properly plug and abandon a well, which includes rehabilitating the well site, the road and any pipelines or other infrastructure.

Adrienne Sandoval, director of New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division, agreed that the downturn comes with certain risks. “Companies on the margins of going out of business may be forced to make decisions that put compliance on the backburner,” she said. “We need to be as diligent as possible to make sure our regulations are being followed and we’re protecting human health and the environment.”

In the age of Trump, deregulation is the watchword and many companies don't do the right thing. The consequence is methane leaking from abandoned wells and contributing to global warming as GHGs build up in the atmosphere. The further consequence is destructive wildfires all over the world from California to Australia to Siberia which experienced 100 degree temperatures above the Arctic circle this year!

"In the next 15 years we will eliminate in the state of California the sales of internal combustion engines," Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento before signing the order. "If you want to reduce asthma, if you want to mitigate the rise of sea level, if you want to mitigate the loss of ice sheets around the globe, then this is a policy for other states to follow." Newsom's executive order calls ending the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 a "goal," but it also orders the Air Resources Board to immediately begin drafting regulations to achieve it by that year.

Now it is up to the California legislature to put some teeth in Governor Newsom's "mandate." It's got to be full steam ahead for eliminating GHGs on a systematic basis, and everybody has to get on board this train. So far since the Paris accords in 2015 more, not less, GHGs have gone into the atmosphere every year. It will be interesting to see if 2020 will be any different due to the coronavirus pandemic. If the nations of the world don't put aside their petty grievances and get on the same page to drastically reduce GHGs, we can expect more and more destructive wildfires as well as sea level rise leading to destructive floods and hurricanes.

You know it's not just about making America great again, it's about making the world great. It's about making the world great by creating a sustainable and inhabitable planet powered by renewable energy. It's about doing something about the 80 million refugees in the world that America helped create. It's about doing something about the 40% of the world's population that does not even have clean water or adequate sanitation systems. Americans need to not be so self centered, get off their carcasses and make the earth great again.

As the West Goes Up in Flames, Trump Couldn’t Care Less

by Robert Reich

Monday, September 14, 2020

The air outside my window is yellow today. It was orange yesterday. The Air Quality Index is over 200. The Environmental Protection Agency defines this as a “health alert” in which “everyone may experience more serious health effects if they are exposed for 24 hours.” Unfortunately, the index has been over 200 for several days.

The West is burning. Wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington are incinerating homes, killing scores of people, sickening many others, causing hundreds of thousands to evacuate, burning entire towns to the ground, consuming millions of acres, and blanketing the western third of the United States with thick, acrid and dangerous smoke.

Yet the president has said and done almost nothing. He’s in California today for a quick photo-op, and then high-tails back to Washington (or is it Mar-a-Lago?) as fast as he can. 

A month ago, Trump wanted to protect lives in Oregon and California from “rioters and looters.” He sent federal forces into the streets of Portland and threatened to send them to Oakland and Los Angeles.

Today, Portland is in danger of being burned and Oakland and Los Angeles are under health alerts. 

Trump couldn’t care less. These states voted against him in 2016 and he still bears a grudge.

He came close to rejecting California’s request for emergency funding.

“He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him,” said former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor.

Another explanation for Trump’s indifference is that the wildfires are tied to human-caused climate change, which Trump has done everything humanly possible to worsen.

Extreme weather disasters are rampaging across America. Last Wednesday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released its latest State of the Climate report, finding that just in August the US was hit by four billion-dollar calamities. In addition to wildfires, there were two enormous hurricanes and an extraordinary Midwest derecho.

These are inconvenient facts for a president who has spent much of his presidency dismantling every major climate and environmental policy he can lay his hands on.

Starting with his unilateral decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump has been the most anti-environmental president in history.

He has called climate change a “hoax”. He has claimed, with no evidence, that windmills cause cancer. He has weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plants and from cars and trucks. He has rolled back rules governing clean air, water and toxic chemicals. He has opened more public land to oil and gas drilling.

He has targeted California in particular, revoking the state’s authority to set tougher car emission standards than those required by the federal government.

In all, the Trump administration has reversed, repealed, or otherwise rolled back nearly 70 environmental rules and regulations. More than 30 rollbacks are still in progress.

Now, seven weeks before election day, with much of the nation either aflame or suffering other consequences of climate change, Trump unabashedly defends his record and attacks Joe Biden.

“The core of [Biden’s] economic agenda is a hard-left crusade against American energy,” Trump harrumphed in a Rose Garden speech last month.

Not quite. While Biden has made tackling climate change a centerpiece of his campaign, proposing to invest $2 trillion in a massive green jobs program to build renewable energy infrastructure, his ideas are not exactly radical. The money would be used for improving energy efficiency, constructing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, and increasing renewable energy from wind, solar and other technologies.

Biden wants to end the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by 2035, and to bring America to net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by no later than 2050. His goals may be too modest. If what is now occurring in the west is any indication, 2050 will be too late.

Nonetheless, Americans have a clear choice. In a few weeks, when they decide whether Trump deserves another four years, climate change will be on the ballot.

The choice shouldn’t be hard to make. Like the coronavirus, the dire consequences of climate change – coupled with Trump’s utter malfeasance – offer unambiguous proof that he couldn’t care less about the public good.

Off the Top of My Head

Global Warming a Hoax? The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Doesn't Think So

by John Lawrence, September 14, 2020

Regardless of the official stance of the Trump administration that global warming is a hoax, the proof is in the pudding when investors, insurance companies and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission starts to be concerned about global warming. They have produced a report, "Managing Climate Risk in the US Financial System," which says in part:

"Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy. Climate change is already impacting or is anticipated to impact nearly every facet of the economy, including infrastructure, agriculture, residential and commercial property, as well as human health and labor productivity. Over time, if significant action is not taken to check rising global average temperatures, climate change impacts could impair the productive capacity of the economy and undermine its ability to generate employment, income, and opportunity. Even under optimistic emissions-reduction scenarios, the United States, along with countries around the world, will have to continue to cope with some measure of climate change-related impacts.

"This reality poses complex risks for the U.S. financial system."

While almost 5 million acres have burned in the western states of California, Oregon and Washington, don't forget that 12 million acres burned in Australia this year. The cost of Australia's fires have been placed at $100 billion. More than 3.3 million acres have burned in California this year, a million acres in Oregon and 600,000 in the state of Washington. Before this, 2018 had held the record for the amount of land burned in California, with close to 900 thousand acres affected. The cost of the 2018 California wildfires was estimated at $400 billion. 18,000 structures burned. This year over 4,100 structures have burned so far, fire season has not even officially started and already about 4 times as much acreage has burned as burned in 2018.  Although fires in the US have been massive and costly, there are other parts of the world just as much at risk. In 2019  more than 17 million acres of Siberian wilderness, an area larger than Greece, burned in just two months. In 1987 the Heilongjiang Fire devoured three million acres of forest in The Greater Khingan Range, including one sixth of China’s timber reserves. In 2019 more than 74,000 fires were started in the Amazon, an 84 percent surge from the year before, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

Here are a few details of this year's California fires:

Elkhorn fire: Lightning strikes, 14 structures destroyed; 1 structure damaged; 1 injury. Southern segment of the fire perimeter eventually merged into the August Complex, while the western front of the fire absorbed the Hopkins, Vinegar Peak and Willow Basin Fires, all of which are now managed under the Elkhorn Complex. Individually, it is the sixth-largest fire in California history.

August complex: Lightning strikes started 37 fires, several of which grew to large sizes, especially the Doe Fire; 1 firefighter injury; 1 firefighter fatality. It became the largest fire complex in California history and combined with the Elkhorn Fire on September 10.

SCU Lightning Complex: Deer Zone, Marsh, Canyon Zone and other surrounding fires combined into one multi-fire incident by CalFire; all believed to have been sparked by an intense and widespread lightning storm; 136 structures destroyed; 26 structures damaged; 5 injuries. It is the third-largest fire complex in California history.

LNU Lightning Complex: Multi-fire incident that includes the Hennessey Fire (305,651 acres), the Walbridge Fire (55,209 acres), and the Meyers Fire (2,360 acres) sparked by lightning; 1,491 structures destroyed; 232 structures damaged; 4 injuries; 5 fatalities. It is the fourth-largest fire complex in California history.

If the world is to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, it will require not only that the US rejoins the Paris agreement. The US must cooperate with China since the US and China are the two largest emitters of GHGs. China like the US has large quantities of coal which it has used to operate most of its power generating plants because of its low cost. China is a willing participant in the Paris agreement, but will have to make large financial sacrifices if it strands its large supplies of cheap coal. It will have less incentive to do so if the west, particularly the US, proceeds on a course of alienating China. That's why it's so important that the US and China cooperate on a friendly basis to lead the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So let's give the financial sector the last word. Their key recommendation is: "The United States should establish a price on carbon. It must be fair, economy-wide, and effective in reducing emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement. This is the single most important step to manage climate risk and drive the appropriate allocation of capital."

'Entire Western US on Fire' as Region Faces Deadly Flames Compounded by Heatwave, Blackouts, and Coronavirus

Published on Wednesday, September 09, 2020

by Common Dreams

Seventy wildfires raged across California, Oregon, Washington, and other western states on Wednesday. 

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

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A law enforcement officer watches flames launch into the air as fire continues to spread at the Bear fire in Oroville, California on September 9, 2020. (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

A record-shattering heatwave, continuing wildfires, power blackouts, and the coronavirus pandemic in California have combined to put the health and safety of residents across the state in danger this week, as other western states face dozens of blazes as well.

More than 720,000 people in California were told Tuesday to prepare for power shutoffs by Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities—part of what has been called the "new normal" to minimize wildfire damage as two dozen major fires rage throughout the state.

"Yesterday, 330,000 acres burned in WA. That's more than 12 of the last 18 entire fire seasons.
—Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.)

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, this year's first round of preventative shutoffs began Monday, affecting 172,000 households. 

Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric were also considering shutting off power for more than 71,000 homes combined on Tuesday. 

The shutoffs are being planned as the state faces historic heatwaves; officials in Los Angeles County recorded a record high of 121º Fahrenheit over the weekend, while the temperature in San Francisco rose to 100º on Sunday. 

The National Weather Service issued a warning as temperatures dropped that the widespread power shutoffs could create health risks for vulnerable Californians, as many may need to use their air conditioners to stay cool. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that the state had financially prepared for preventative power shutoffs after PG&E was criticized for its handling of the protocols last year, facing accusations that the utility didn't give customers enough warning as it initiated a widespread planned power outage for the first time as the state dealt with wildfires. 

The state has put in place "protocols and partnerships with the counties on making sure those that are impacted have support" and is "making sure [community resource] centers are up and operational to protect those most vulnerable," Newsom told the press. 

The centers will retain power so residents can use them—but as The Guardian reported, "some residents may avoid them because of coronavirus infection risks," as people have been advised not to gather in large groups.

Officials also released an air quality advisory, warning that smoke buildup across huge swaths of the state is making the air "unhealthy for sensitive groups"—many of whom are already at heightened risk for complications if they contract Covid-19. 

Maps of the American West showed that California is far from alone in facing dozens of wildfires, even as the region is just now entering the time of year when fires are typically a concern.

More than 70 wildfires were recorded in western states including Washington and Oregon on Wednesday. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a vocal proponent of far-reaching climate action legislation and a transition away from the burning of fossil fuels to renewable energy, tweeted that a record-breaking 330,000 acres of land were burned in a single day in his state.

"That's more than 12 of the last 18 entire fire seasons," Inslee wrote. 

The Oregon Climate Office reported that for the first time, the National Weather Service placed parts of the state under an extreme fire advisory. On social media, viral images of the city of Stayton, located 16 miles from Salem, Oregon, showed a bright red sky over the downtown area in the middle of the day Tuesday.

Malden, Washington—a town of about 200 people not far from Spokane—faced the destruction of its post office, city hall, and about 80% of its homes.

"The scale of this disaster really can't be expressed in words," Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers told CBS News. "The fire will be extinguished, but a community has been changed for a lifetime."

Beth Doglio, a progressive candidate running to represent Washington's 10th district, reiterated her campaign message pushing for a "clean energy future" and a rapid transition away from planet-heating fossil fuel extraction. 

"We are experiencing the effects of climate change now as Western Washington faces multiple burning fires and poor air quality," Doglio tweeted. "We have to transition away [from] burning fossil fuels. We need climate leadership in Congress."

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Off the Top of My Head

It's Not the Economy, Stupid; It's Global Warming, Stupid

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2020

Trump is trying to make his reelection all about the economy. In 1992 James Carville uttered the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” Carville was a strategist in Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against incumbent George H. W. Bush. It may have been about the economy then, but now it's about global warming. If we don't make this the top issue, then there may be no economy in the coming years.

The economy as it presently exists is antithetical to an economy in which the campaign against global warming has the highest priority. Why? Because the economy as it presently exists is based on oil. How can politicians not have noticed this? How can they say they want to fight global warming and then turn around and say we want to do more fracking or we want to export more oil? Making the fight against global warming the highest priority means that we will have to sanction the production and use of oil. We might have to ban gas guzzlers and only allow hybrid or fully electric cars on the road. What if the state of California restricted gas burning car use? What if they hugely incentivized the use of mass transit where it existed or built more where it didn't exist?

San Diego has a good trolley, bus and light rail system. The only problem is hardly anyone except poor people use it. It could be mandated that cars could only be used 2 days a week, for example. Then people would be forced to use public transit. Greenhouse gas emissions would then be radically reduced which is what needs to happen. Continuing on the present course will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact they are increasing year after year even despite the widespread knowledge that they are driving climate change and causing more wildfires and floods. Despite the fact that many cities are now experiencing sunny day flooding and will only see more and more incidences of that as time goes on if nothing substantial is done, American society is still leaving it up to the free market system to solve the problem which it is not doing.

People in the fossil fuel industry do need to lose their jobs. Those people can be transitioned to other jobs in a Green New Deal, but the nation needs to be put on the same footing as it was put on during the Great Depression  when drastic action was taken. The problem is that in the fossil fuel economy we have right now there are plenty of jobs. During the Great Depression most Americans were on the same page that drastic action needed to be taken because they didn't have jobs. Now most people want to hang onto their jobs. Rather than being for a drastic shakeup of the economy, they would rather continue business as usual and convince themselves that either global warming doesn't exist or that a gradual market based approach will solve the problem. Then there are those who don't care if the earth becomes uninhabitable some day because they think they'll probably not be around to see it. Therefore, they want to maximize the benefits to their lifestyle while they're still here rather than make any sacrifices for future generations.

We might as well say sayonara to the earth and future generations if we don't as a society get behind a candidate like Bernie Sanders who is the most likely candidate to radically change the economy in terms of a Green New Deal. The idea is to take drastic action to change the economy from an oil oriented economy to an economy based on renewable energy. Included in the concept is the transitioning of workers to jobs in the new economy. Will enough workers get behind this concept or will all they see is the fact that they will be losing their present jobs and vote to hang onto them at any cost, that cost being the sacrifice of future generations to a horrible demise on an uninhabitable earth?

'Virtually Unstoppable' Blazes, Record Heat, and Mass Evacuations as Australia Wildfires Intensify

Published on Saturday, January 04, 2020

by Common Dreams

"We are still yet to hit the worst of it," said Gladys Berejiklian, premier of New South Wales.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

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Residents look on as flames burn through bush on January 04, 2020 in Lake Tabourie, Australia. (Photo: Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)

Powerful winds and sweltering heat on Saturday combined to intensify catastrophic bushfires across Australia, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes as firefighters struggled to contain the "virtually unstoppable" blazes ravaging large swaths of the continent.

At least two dozen people and an estimated half a billion animals have been killed by the fires, which have scorched more than six million hectares of land since September.

Australian authorities said Saturday and Sunday are likely to be two of the worst days since the fire season began late last year. "We are still yet to hit the worst of it," warned New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

As the Associated Press reported Saturday, "the fire danger increased as temperatures rose to record levels across Australia on Saturday, surpassing 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in Canberra, the capital, and reaching a record-high 48.9 C (120 F) in Penrith, in Sydney's western suburbs."

#Canberra has reached 43.6C—a new hottest temperature record for any month. The previous Canberra records are 42.2C at Canberra Airport in 1968 and 42.8C at the now-closed Acton site in 1939. Observations at: https://t.co/8mMXbj9VGR

— Bureau of Meteorology Australian Capital Territory (@BOM_ACT) January 4, 2020

According to CNN, three fires in the Omeo region in Victoria state combined overnight "to form a single blaze bigger than the New York borough of Manhattan."

Angus Barners, an incident controller at the Rural Fire Service in Moruya, NSW, told CNN that "we can't stop the fires, all we can do is steer them around communities."

"The entire sky has been turned this deathly shade of orange"

The BBC's Phil Mercer reports from a dust storm in New South Wales - the high winds are making conditions perilous for firefighters tackling Australia's bushfireshttps://t.co/gXPAKxtGGt pic.twitter.com/R63XQvAuik

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 4, 2020

Prime Minister Scott Morrison—who has faced fierce criticism from residents for failing to take sufficient action to confront the blazes—announced the 3,000 Australian Defense Force Reserve troops Saturday to help fight the devastating fires.

Defense Minister Linda Reynolds told reporters that it is the first time reservists have been called up "in this way in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation's history."

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Decades of Denial Have to End: We Need Radical Climate Leadership in 2020

Published on Monday, December 30, 2019

by Oil Change International

The next decade will define our collective future. We have no time to waste.

by Andy Rowell

 

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Whereas the young are climate heroes, Australia’s Prime Minister is a coward, a climate denier who loves coal. (Photo: South Bend Voice/cc/flickr)

My heart is bleeding. My heart is angry. As 2019 draws to an end, Australia is on fire. The country is burning. Homes are being destroyed. And brave volunteer fire-fighters are dying.

At a time of national crisis, you need leadership. If political leaders cannot lead at a time of crisis, then they should not be leaders at all.

For weeks, Australia has been suffering from excessive temperatures. For weeks, Sydney has been choking on a toxic soup of air pollution caused by the fires. Temperatures have been hitting record after record. The iconic Blue Mountains are scorched red and blackened. The land as we know it is no more.

Scott Morrison fiddles while Australia burns.
He was backed, by big money and the billionaire press, to ensure that effective action against climate breakdown was not taken.
And boy, is he ensuring it.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) December 19, 2019

The crisis is mounting with experts predicting the country could see 50 C temperatures—over 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

On Friday December 20th, two volunteer fire-fighters died, leaving behind wives and young families. Today there was another fatality in the fire-zone. Tomorrow could be a “catastrophic” day, as soaring temperatures and strong winds continue to wreak havoc. Temperatures could be as much as the mid-forties for much of New South Wales. The state has now announced a State of Emergency.

As the earth bakes, the sea boils, leading to large numbers of fish being killed.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, from the University of New South Wales’ Climate Change Research centre, says “Climate scientists have been banging on about it longer than I’ve been alive. We all knew at some point that everything would come together in a perfect storm to make people fully realise climate change is here and now it is. We aren’t surprised, but we are equally shocked and saddened.”

Meanwhile, the climate denier, Scott Morrison went on holiday to Hawaii. He was photographed smiling with a thumbs up on the beach. He was photographed sitting by a pool.

Just going to RT this until it breaks as news tomorrow - our PM has made no attempt to come home from #Hawaii despite SA going up in flames. He’s by the pool lying to us... again. #ClimateEmergency #MorrisonFires #auspol #wherethebloodyhellareya? https://t.co/CM27jo5NRm

— 💧Blair Palese (@blairpalese) December 20, 2019

As outrage grew back home, Morrison said: “I deeply regret any offence caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time”.

But these are hollow words from a hollow man. A man who does not care about climate change or even believe it is real. His Government is incompetent at home and stands accused of deliberately scuppering international action at the recent UN climate talks in Madrid.

As Morrison was photographed sitting by a swimming pool, there are contrasting stories and images: of a young traumatised boy driving a family pickup to escape the flames. Of a terrified young girl protesting about the fires outside Kirribilly House and being asked by the Police to move. As she reluctantly does so, she holds her banner in defiance.

As police went about their move-on order at Kirribilly House, one girl was visibly frightened during police direction.

She and her father complied with the move-on order.#ClimateProtest pic.twitter.com/PJHHAs1B8n

— River McCrossen (@RivOMac) December 19, 2019

She is not alone in demanding climate action now.

Bunking in at the PM's house to wait for @ScottMorrisonMP to come back and do his job and tackle the #climatecrisis. We're outside 109 Kirribilli Ave if you wanna join. #WhereTheBloodyHellAreYou #FireMorrison pic.twitter.com/aVMs1CMv0b

— School Strike 4 Climate (@StrikeClimate) December 18, 2019

But, whereas the young are climate heroes, Australia’s Prime Minister is a coward, a climate denier who loves coal.

This has to change. Everything has to change. Do not get me wrong: much progress has been made fighting our climate emergency. Renewables have been making leaps and bounds. Coal is slowly heading for the history books. But despite the good news, we are still currently heading for 3 degrees C warming under a business-as-usual scenario – put another way, we are heading for a climate catastrophe. We have lost much of this decade to the deniers like Scott Morrison, but this cannot continue.

So we have to act. The next decade will define our collective future. We better not waste it. We have no time to waste. For we have wasted too much time already.

Andy Rowell is a staff blogger for Oil Change International in addition to working as a freelance writer and investigative journalist who specializes in environmental, health and lobbying issues. Follow him on Twitter: @andy_rowell

Off the Top of My Head

It's Christmas Every Day in America

by John Lawrence, December 22, 2019

America invented the mass consumer culture. There are goodies for everyone every day of the year. No wonder no one wants to change the formula. However, it's an empire sitting on massive debt - $21 trillion and counting - and a massive military-industrial complex effectively sworn to protect America's preeminence and predominance around the world. Under Trump the US has sought to sanction not only its allies but also its creditors including the largest of which - China. What's wrong with this picture?

The US Federal Reserve Bank is printing $60 billion a month and putting it into the banking system. With various versions of quantitative easing (QE) this influx of money, which has been going on since 2008 due to the collapse of Wall Street in that year, has kept the system going, but has led to a huge inflation in asset prices including housing and the stock market. This not only keeps the bankers happy, but it also keeps baby boomers happy since their houses bought in the 60s and 70s have increased substantially in value as well as have their 401ks. This wealth has trickled down to children and grandchildren of the boomers, but not to people starting out with nothing  such as the millenials with immense sums of student loan debt.

The theory of American society is that, as long as the Christmas tree of mass consumer culture can be perpetuated, all will be well. There will be no rebellion. The inequality gap does not really affect large portions of the middle class because who cares how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates gets as long as their assets are increasing in value too. Sure, income has remained relatively constant for the middle class while the income and wealth of the upper.1% has sky rocketed. But property values and 401ks have made up for it for those lucky enough to have bought property 30 or more years ago and invested in a 401k as soon as it became available in 1980. The only people that have been really hurt by this increasing wealth gap of course are the poor. The rise in property values has priced poor renters out of the housing market because of skyrocketing rents and forced a large increase in the homeless population who cannot even afford the cheapest rents.

The American empire protected by a vast military-industrial complex costing $1 trillion a year (the amount the US goes further into debt by each year) will continue as long as it possibly can. The fly in the ointment is that the American empire rests on an empire of oil sealed in a deal with the devil - Saudi Arabia. This oil based empire cannot continue to exist if the earth is to remain a viable place for the habitation of human beings and other large mammals. Some species will inevitably remain even after sea level rises, floods and wildfires take their toll, but insurance rates are already starting to rise. Home insurance rates already increased more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2015, the year with the latest available data. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners attributes the increase to natural disasters, inflation, rising real estate values and construction costs.

Nevertheless, this year has seen record sales during the Christmas season both online and in brick and mortar stores. Record numbers of people are traveling during the holidays both by air and in cars.The mass consumer economy is in no danger of vanishing any time soon. It is onward and upward for the economy still dependent on fossil fuels and not about to give up an iota of record profits even if it means that the planet will suffer disastrous effects from climate change. Nothing can prevent this upward surge of capitalism except another collapse of the Big Banks, but, with the Federal Reserve standing by to inject more money into wealthy peoples' pockets if need be, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.

California wildfires: Camp fire becomes state's deadliest with 42 people killed

 From the Guardian:

 

As more than 8,000 fire crews battle the Camp and Woolsey fires and hotels fill in Chico, residents find refuge in unofficial shelters

Play Video

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 California wildfires: rescuers search for victims as winds fuel flames – video

 The Camp fire has become the most destructive wildfire in California history, incinerating the town of Paradise in the northern part of the state. It is also among the deadliest, with at least 29 killed, and it has displaced more than 50,000 people.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on Monday the fire had grown by three sq miles to 177 sq miles and was 25% contained.

Two people have also died in the Woolsey fire, a major blaze around Los Angeles, bringing total deaths in the state to 31. On Monday officials said that fire had burned 91,572 acres and destroyed 370 structures. It was 20% contained. On Sunday evening, some neighborhoods allowed evacuees back in and the US 101 highway west of LA was reopened.

Statewide, 150,000 people have been displaced and more than 8,000 fire crews are deployed. Authorities have said 228 people are unaccounted for. High winds and dry conditions threaten more areas through the rest of the week, fire officials warned.

Around Paradise, about 1,300 people have found refuge at evacuation shelters, according to a Cal Fire spokesman, Steve Kaufman, a total which includes several shelters in Butte county and some in Sutter, Glenn and Plumas counties. But that’s only a fraction of the total displaced from Paradise, Magalia, Concow and other towns in the Sierra foothills.

Many converged on Chico, a city of about 90,000 just 20 minutes from Paradise. Hotels in Chico are at capacity with fire evacuees and some, but not all, shelters are full. Others stayed with friends and family or even in their cars, eager to remain close enough to return home at a moment’s notice, even though that could be months away.

A Walmart in Chico has become an unofficial refugee camp for those displaced by the blaze. On Sunday, more than a dozen tents lined an empty field next to the store, while the parking lot was filled day and night with trailers and cars stuffed with belongings – toys, pillows and family photos.

Though without some of the comforts of a traditional shelter, the fire refugees in the parking lot were not forgotten. Local food truck owners were there to provide free food and church groups from around the state cooked and distributed meals. Chico residents provided clothes, toys and gear, free of charge.

Evacuees said they couldn’t find space at a nearby shelter, didn’t want to part from their animals or didn’t feel comfortable at a shelter.

At this unofficial evacuation center, tales of generosity by those most affected emerged. Tammy Mezera and her friend Daryl Merritt spent three nights sleeping in a tent outside the store after the fire forced them to run for their lives. When they found out a neighbor, Matthew Flanagan, had slept under a taco truck, they gave him the extra space in their tent.

“It’s like an instant family,” Mezera said, petting her dog. “We’re all taking care of each other.”

The three made friends with strangers like Andrew Duran, who sleeps just outside their tent in a sleeping bag. And despite the darkness and loss, they showed endless generosity toward one another. Eating breakfast together on Sunday morning, they shared a few laughs, dancing to Bill Withers’ Lean on Me.

It’s the kind of coming together the community will need, Mezera said, after more than 6,400 homes were lost.

Meanwhile, as firefighters and law enforcement seek to protect the town and its citizens from the deadly blaze, they faced the loss of their own homes. The fire destroyed the homes of 17 Paradise police officers, Chief Eric Reinbold said. None of the officers missed a day of work since the fire began, he added.

At least 38 firefighters battling the blaze lost their homes, said Tim Aboudara, the International Association of Fire Fighters state service representative. That number was expected to grow.

The association was working with the CDF Firefighters Benevolent Foundation and the California Professional Firefighters and to assist those firefighters and their families. Several had already been placed into temporary housing, Aboudara said.

Along with the loss of their own homes, many firefighters are devastated they were unable to stop the rapid spread of the fire before it overtook the town of Paradise, Aboudara said.

“Our job is to put the fire out and we couldn’t stop that,” Aboudara said. “There was nothing we could do.”

No long-term plans to house evacuees, who may not be allowed to return home for months, have been announced, but Congressman Doug LaMalfa said on Sunday he expects a federal disaster declaration from the White House within the coming days, the subject of appeals by the governor, Jerry Brown.

“This is truly a tragedy that all Californians can understand and respond to,” Brown told reporters on Sunday. “It’s a time to pull together and work through these tragedies.”

Once federal aid is approved, Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) will come to the area to begin working with local residents and business owners on recovery.