This is the Tuesday, October 8 analysis from Tropical Tidbits. Next update will be tomorrow pre-impact.
For those unfamiliar with the topography of Florida, here are some screencaps I took from the 3D view on Google maps, first showing the general impact area of the previous hurricane (Helena) in the "Big Bend" area of northern Florida -
Anna Maria is a barrier island at the entrance to the harbor, covered by homes and condominiums. One of my high school classmates rode out Helene there in a home 13 feet above sea level. He and his wife will evacuate before the arrival of Milton. On the north side of the harbor are more barrier islands -
- plus housing developments that were presumably created by dredging and filling. I would assume that a 10-15' storm surge will bring water into the second floor of those homes, while on the surface the hurricane winds will create battering waves laden with debris. The destruction of property will be catastrophic.
For those tempted to enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing rich people get what they deserve, remember that many of those afflicted will be middle-class elderly people whose life savings have been put into a retirement home or condo unit. You can modify a Zillow search of these areas to get a sense of the situation.
Some of those people will have been managers, and they are part of the first wave of people who /could/ have started to do things to mitigate climate change, and didn't. Or they blocked the efforts of junior employees, suppressed the reports, smeared the researchers, lied and lobbied, and pooh-poohed or even sabotaged the first attempts to address the problem.
ReplyDeleteThese probably are some of the first people to actually really be reaping what they sowed. Because during their careers, it was becoming clear that climate change was a problem, and they tended to be the senior staff resisting the reforms. While I presume there's a majority of blameless people around them, this is a case of consequences finally arriving on the doorsteps of a few of the right people. What fraction deserves it? Who knows? 5%? 2%? 0.1%? I have no idea. And I don't know whether to hope the number is low or high, frankly. But as a lot of truly blameless people ain't getting any sympathy either, it seems particularly odd to carve out sympathy for some of the people who might have been able to make a difference, but instead threw their weight /against/ reforms.
For the record, if someone spent their career working at a cigarette company, for example, or spent 20 years in marketing smearing the researchers who were working to uncover what was really going on, then the schadenfreude is entirely deserved, and there certainly will be some people who fit that profile mixed in with this crowd.
Anonymous person, there's a lot to unpack from your angry rant, but I'm particularly curious about your choice in the third paragraph to condemn people who "spent their career working at a cigarette company" as being somehow deserving of having their lives ruined by a hurricane. Are you conflating lung cancer with climate change?
DeleteAnd I'll add that your screed reminds me of comments I've heard from my most liberal/progressive friends who were absolutely delighted to learn that the COVID epidemic was killing more Republicans than Democrats and who would be pleased to see Florida scrubbed down to the pavement because the state favored Trump and DeSantis. It's an aggressively vengeful stance that I think in the long run is not helpful.
DeleteOK, perhaps just deal with one part at a time:
ReplyDeleteIf you worked 'for example' at a cigarette company, as I said, you knowingly spent your career helping to make something addictive that kills people. This has been known for the entire careers of /everyone/ now living who has ever worked at a cigarette company, because the adverse health effects were known by the 1960s, and were so far beyond all established doubt that government health warnings first appeared in the 1970s. Governments tend to be very reluctant to meddle in this way, yet for tobacco, they did.
So, ok, disregarding everything else I wrote, how do you justify working for a company selling an addictive 'recreational' product that kills 8 million a year worldwide? The total deaths since the warnings first appeared is hundreds of millions. Of course, you can't just sell it, you also have to advertise it, you have to lobby governments, you have to smear anti-smoking researchers, target the vulnerable, falsify research information, bamboozle and obfuscate, and so on. It's not just the product I'm bothered about, it's the necessary framework of deceit that you must also set up in order /to/ sell the product. I can't find any precise figures for how many people work in the industry, but it's in the ballpark of a million or two worldwide. This is a job where /each employee/ contributes to the deaths of perhaps half a dozen people per year. How many people per year do /you/ think it's okay to kill? Is it all right to do as long as it's shared out finely enough?
If we were to get rid of all the jobs where people operate in teams to kill other people, we should deal with the tobacco industry before worrying about soldiers.
That's why I mentioned tobacco, because they've known what they were doing for nearly a century and they carried on doing it anyway, even when people tried to stop them. The similarity with the people who knew climate change was real and yet, over decades, sabotaged the efforts to mitigate it wherever they could, is hard to overlook.
I should re-emphasise, the people who merely did nothing when they could have done something, I'm just indifferent about. Perhaps coldly indifferent. I'd prefer to prioritise helping the blameless over them, and there's already more blameless than I can possibly help. But the people who cynically made things worse, or who stopped others from helping, those are the people I'm angry with. Unfortunately the guilty are mixed in with the non-guilty and the blameless, and it's impossible to tell them apart. But even though I can't tell the guilty ones apart, I'm still angry with them.
It's not climate change - it's planetary change - we are NOT at fault for any of this. CME's are blasting us.
ReplyDeleteContinuing Medical Education?
DeleteSorry, Trace. I was kind of trolling you with my previous comment because I wasn't sure I wanted to get into a discussion of the subject. But... if you want to say that we are not at fault for ANY of this [global warming], I wonder how you approach all the data showing increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and especially methane since the industrial revolution. Are you suggesting that 1) these gases do NOT contribute to global warming, or that 2) the data I refer to are "fake science" or some type of politically-motivated conspiracy to deceive the public?
DeleteI wish all the people I don't like to step on a lego barefoot, but nobody, nowhere, at no time should lose their home... ever.
ReplyDeletexoxoxoBruce
I think we're faced with abrupt climate change and near term human extinction. The extreme but geographically discrete effects we see today are a phase along the way to an ever widening catastrophe, to include crop killing mega heat waves. (I dearly hope I'm wrong, but that's where the facts lead, IMO.)
ReplyDeleteWho's to blame? We can look in the mirror and get a pretty good idea. It'll never make sense to me that big bad oil executives forced us to go on consuming like maniacs and populating the Earth with 8 billion+ humans. Yes, the tobacco industry did its thing, but the smoker lit-up 90 million times on the way to getting lung cancer or emphysema.
I take no joy in the suffering of catastrophe victims of any kind. Not least of all because that bell tolls for me.
The problem with Florida as a whole is that it's a giant unsustainable real estate project run by the rules that real estate people set. They care until they've made their sell. All rules and regulations facilitate selling unsustainable dreams.
ReplyDeleteThis started with Flagler and his railroad-to-resorts along the east coast, but Tampa and the west coast are equally bad. In a sane world, many of these communities would not have been built.
All this beach building is driven by the fact that counties in the US are generally funded by property taxes, so local politicians have an incentive to allow building so they get income now, while they ignore the damage in the future. In Florida this model is put on steroids by not having an income tax and hence making all government even more dependent on property taxes.
Meanwhile, especially the Florida west coast is inhabited by many who deny climate change, and vote for the real-estate King. It is beyond frustrating that hundreds of your and my tax dollars are now going to people who vote against funding organizations like FEMA. In every proposed budget Trump put draconian cuts to FEMA. DeSantis voted against FEMA and help after Sandy when he was in congress. He's pretty much banned the concept climate change from Florida politics. Most Republican House members from Florida voted as recent as a few weeks ago against funding for FEMA.
Schadenfreude is not right, but a big TOLD YOU SO is in order.
And many of these communities should not be rebuilt without decent protections against future hurricanes. If those communities decide those protections are too expensive, well, then that's the correct conclusion.
Amen to all of that.
DeleteThe Florida/political connection makes an interesting talking point, but it's built on coincidence as much as anything else. That is, this particular catastrophe happens to have landed on a politically rich target zone. But the "TOLD YOU SO" applies globally, with the exception of areas where people live within limits of the sort we in the US have long exceeded. There is no state in the US that can point a finger at any other state and say, "You caused this!" Nor do blue state people consume any less than red state people--my state, California, being a great example. America is a consumer orgy and we like it that way. Huge houses kept at 72 degrees, vacation flights, lots of personal vehicle miles, the GHG disaster "standard American diet," constant Amazon deliveries of crap we don't need, the huge carbon footprint associated with device after electronic device. (We should also mention our environmental disaster military, which we all fund and which exists largely for the purpose of securing the American material way of life.) To what extent wealth allows, the world emulates us, but we lead. To the extent I'm on the same train, what's happening in Florida is a result of what I'm choosing to do in California. I can't listen to NPR, vote for Democrats and magically make that last vacation flight carbon neutral. Frankly, I think talking about climate deniers is possibly the best distraction from the attitudes and activities of lifestyle deniers. Henry David Thoreau explained all this a few years before our particular experience of Armageddon descended upon us, but he's reduced to a silly cartoon in the American mind. Henry could legitimately say, "I told you so."
DeleteYou can place all the blame on Democrats if you want but Republicans have a long history of refusing to do anything to address climate change. Their false claims about FEMA and some making up outrageous stories about weather control aren’t helping either.
DeleteThere's no point in throwing your hands up in the air and saying: It's too late the end is near.
DeleteThat's just bullshit.
And yes, we all caused climate change. But no, not all of use chose to live on the beach in the hurricane zone. Or to your point, in a wild fire hazard zone.
But there are things we can do. Stop building on the beach. Follow wildfire safety and plant plants and trees that burn less fast in California. Build more solid buildings in tornado allay. Protect mountain areas from flooding. Build better isolated homes in Wisconsin. Stop building highways. Build more railroads. Build 15-minute neighborhoods. Invest in biking.
The problem is that we're not doing that because - in the US - one party denies there's a problem. Elsewhere in the world, similar less extreme positions also lead to inaction.
We can do so much. But we're not doing it.
Nepkarel, your "fixes" are superficial. Assuming we're not past every tipping point (here addressing your "bullshit" claim), we (we in the US and in the rich nations of the world) would have to cut consumption by 80% to get to a one Earth per capita consumption/environmental damage level. I don't think that's gonna happen. Instead we're going to follow the rapacious, hedonistic consumption path we're on, while blaming the fossil fuel industry and putting our faith in Hail Mary green-tech miracles. I don't say this because I'm a pessimist, I say it because it's evident in every conversation (or lack thereof) and in the values and behavior patterns we see across America. "Investing in biking" is ritualistic environmentalism; certainly in California. Not serious. Not enough.
Delete@Crowboy: Investing is biking can be done. You know I'm Dutch. There's nothing other than political will that stops Americans from building like: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/
DeleteYou can't say solutions don't exist when they exist in reality. The vast majority of car rides are less than 3-5 miles, i.e. perfectly bikable distances. Americans don't bike because there is no safe way for them to bike. The Dutch do bike. Because they built that infrastructure.
Also, there are way more bikes in the world than cars. So it's not question whether people want to bike. They do. All around the world. They have the bikes.
https://www.threads.net/@fietsprofessor/post/DA7-QV-opZD
And in other things Americans can do, but don't (enough): https://x.com/dualdoppler/status/1844194592666853668?s=57
Apparently Florida does have good (current) building codes for wind protection, while lacking equally common sense rules for not building on the beach.
Anyway: There are a lot of solutions that can be implemented, but too many people do not want to. Climate change deniers have moved the goal posts so much that they're in the "It's too late" stage. And too many other people prefer to not spend money in the short term, only to then pay the much much larger cost in the long term.
But sure, throw your hands up in the air, after denying the problem ever existed instead of listening to the people that have been warning for 50 years, and have been proposing solutions for 50 years.
Almost every cost estimate shows that preventing climate change is much much cheaper than dealing with the damage.
"But sure, throw your hands up in the air, after denying the problem ever existed instead of listening to the people that have been warning for 50 years, and have been proposing solutions for 50 years."
DeleteI'm not "denying the problem ever existed." For the last 50 years (my entire adult life) I've believed we need to make radical changes in our way of life and it's not just about climate change, though that's a prime example.
So, what have we seen since the first Earth Day? Decade after decade of increased consumption and population, the wicked twins. Are we now ready to reverse all this? Is it too late? I don't think we're ready and I think in may very well be too late. But, if I was 100% "all in" on resignation, I wouldn't be writing this screed, etc. But, I also won't indulge the notion that tinkering is going to get the job done. I also believe that if we're now in an Earth hospice moment, there's no way delusions of eco-competence and green innovation aspirations can possibly serve in facilitating honest grief.
I stopped flying about 25 years ago, but I did see Amsterdam in the late 90s. I was impressed with the bike culture. The city appeared Utopian. But here's the thing: Europeans are still using about three Earths per capita, to the five we use in the US. Anyone in Europe willing to cut consumption by two-thirds? If so, it's less than 1% of the population--and billions more people are on the global scene wanting the European "standard of living" if they can't have the US standard of living.
My thinking has landed on one core thought: Moral evolution has not kept pace with human innovation. I see no moral revolution on the horizon.
Moral evolution has not kept pace with human innovation. I see no moral revolution on the horizon.
DeleteSo you're throwing your hands up in the air and say that nothing will be done instead of saying nothing can be done.
I apologize for that misrepresentation.
Is it too late?
It's never too late.
there's no way delusions of eco-competence and green innovation aspirations can possibly serve in facilitating honest grief.
I'd rather be delusional than give up. Hope matters.
You're right, hope is a key issue here. I think confusion arises when we try to jam something as nuanced as hope into a binary construct. As in, "hands in the air." You're either hopeful, or not.
DeleteI'm not without hope. I call it the tiny pebble in my shoe. But, I don't have the hope I had 40 years ago, say as a gardening teacher at a Waldorf school. This comes as a result of reading another forty years of science and carefully observing people; that is, our willingness, or lack thereof, to engage honestly. This had led to less hope and days of despair. But, it's about probabilities, not certainties. If I was certain, I could indeed "throw my hands in the air." Binary-like.
I'm reminded of Alcoholics Anonymous. The First Step: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." Has humanity taken that First Step, acknowledging we are powerless over the Earth gutting human colossus? I don't think so. To extend the analogy a bit further, to talk about bike paths is like the alcoholic saying he's switching from whisky to beer. (In the US, it's switching from coal to natural gas.) This does not give me more hope, but less. That is, it seems the alcoholic is that much further from "admitting."
In a word, I have not "thrown up my hands." I hold out hope in one hand and grief in the other. It's a paradox. The hope leads me to want to wake people up (though it does appear to be a fool's errand). The grief leads me to surrender. And to take joy in what's left of this beautiful world.
To paraphrase Walt Whitman, I reserve the right to embody contradictions.
Has humanity taken that First Step, acknowledging we are powerless over the Earth gutting human colossus? I don't think so.
DeleteSpeaking for (all of) humanity is hard.
But a bunch of people are willing to do more than we are now. So, let's get that done.
We haven't even done the low-hanging fruit. This is the easy part. I am not very sympathetic to people who - when attempts at the low-hanging fruit are being made - wail that the low-hanging fruit is not nearly enough.
I know. It isn't. But we gotta start somewhere, and at the moment, there's a large part of the environmental movement that is stopping the implementation of low-hanging fruit because they want all the fruit right now.
I'm fairly convinced - and we can see this in a bit Europe - that if we get the low-hanging fruit out of the way, people will reach for the next low-hanging fruit because they begin to start seeing the benefits.
Going back the the beginning of our conversation. Cities in Europe that have had a significant mode-switch to transit, biking and walking are seeing cleaner air. Much cleaner air. Even NYC does. People also notice that cities are quieter. This matters.
I remember vividly that my parents were very much against removing parking from the central square in my hometown a couple of decades ago. But recently, sitting on a lovely terrace having a good beer, they jokingly said "Can you believe there used to be parking here? People were so silly back then!". I opted to not remind them they were the silly people.
Yes, it's too little, too late and too slow. But if we don't set the first step, we never get anywhere, so let's get done what we can get done.
And then we hope it expands like a snowball rolling down a hill.
It's the response to the "low hanging fruit" (one of my favorite examples is unnecessary [nearly all] flights, but the list is long) that fuels my pessimism. I don't see any environmentally sane motion. In fact, it's still socially unacceptable to mention grotesque consumerism in any critical light--well, here in the US. And still socially acceptable for Americans to to brag about "walking the Camino"--or whatnot. Every year a new record for vacation air miles is set. And total GHGs keep increasing. So, I agree that we might begin with low hanging fruit, but that we DON'T is also a piece of useful information. That is, as we might attempt to modulate hope. All this in the shadow of the science we tend not to want to look at, which is more dire than the mainstream media is comfortable with exploring. Again, this is not a matter of simply hoping, but also grieving. I accept there's a contradiction in this straddling of view points.
DeleteOne way to deal with climate change would be to not elect a president who claims it’s a Chinese hoax.
ReplyDeleteA way to NOT deal with climate change is to elect another centrist Democrat beholden to corporate America, bent on growing our environmentally toxic economy, albeit with a veneer of "green" action. Then we can all go back to our five Earths per capita lifestyles, believing we're making "significant change." The best of all worlds.
DeleteElecting conservatives who won’t even accept the reality of climate change won’t help anyone. But that’s part of reality’s liberal bias.”
DeleteA way to NOT deal with climate change is to elect another centrist Democrat
DeleteOK. So now what? Vote Jill Stein and get the other guy elected?
Yes, the US political system is very very broken. But that's what you got. So work with what you have and get as far as you can.
However slow we will do this, the world will not actually end. Humanity will not end. Waiting only increase human suffering and the cost to alleviate that.
You think migration is an issue now? Wait till all the coastal cities become uninhabitable. This is not imaginary. Indonesia is building itself a new capital because they've pretty much given up on Jakarta.
"However slow we will do this, the world will not actually end. Humanity will not end."
DeleteIs the assertion, in absolute terms, that "humanity will not end" based in science or faith? To me it sounds as if the near term extinction of our species is unthinkable, more than impossible. That is, we have a destiny.
I have no absolute way of knowing that humanity will not end, and in fact, I see us, and all vertebrate life, as fragile--dependent on a very narrow, Goldilocks habitable zone in the solar system. We are making atmospheric changes jeopardizing that envelope.
For a well researched, peer-reviewed-science approach to understanding the case for near term human extinction, I recommend Guy McPherson's website, Nature Bats Last.
People are dying because of conservative attacks on FEMA. Electing Trump would only make that worse.
ReplyDelete