Sweating it Out Under a Blanket

 “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?”              

Donald Trump tweet, November 21^st

Good to know who’s leading our nation. That cold blast that slammed into the eastern part of the nation? True. It’s called a Polar Vortex. That Arctic air is much warmer on average than it has been in recorded history, that there is a navigable Northwest Passage for much of the year now, and that warmer Arctic air expands like a big balloon, pushing the Gulf Stream – which picks up the colder Canadian air – southward into the United States… well… Since scientists are obviously callous intellectual elites to this populist movement, common sense just proves they are all wrong, and Donald’s theories are the ones to follow. My finger is much colder today than it was last year at this time, so global warming is not real… OMG!

As the government’s own NASA website explains, “In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space. An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms.”

Global warming is real. Think of the “once in 500-year storms” are commonplace. In weather-speak, a “once in 500-year” storm really means that in any year, statistical probabilities basic on gathered data, there is a one in 500 chance that such a storm will occur. Just looking at Houston, Texas, a sad victim of rising Gulf of Mexico temperatures that fuel such powerful events, has experienced three such 500-year-storm-flooding events since 2010. Beaches are indeed surrendering to rising oceans at an alarming rate.  Islands and coastal communities are disappearing. Droughts have stirred revolutions in the Middle East. Floods have ravaged in unprecedented levels in much of Europe. And the nation’s fruit and vegetable larder, California, is dry as a bone.

The California and other Western wildfires are not, as Trump’s ethically-challenged Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke believes, the product of “radical activists” fighting to protect the environment. Out here, we have a fire season that used to end in the fall that continues without end. Just looking up at what should be heavily snow-capped mountains out here, you can see clear proof of our drought. Our forests are dryer. And lots of those out-of-control fires explode and grow on federal lands and forests. We all would like to have more funding to conduct controlled burns and clean-ups in colder weather… but we are so busy trying to contain the vast increase in catastrophic wildfires that funding is a real issue.

On November 17^th, as Donald Trump visited the decimated northern California town of Paradise (which he twice mistakenly called “Pleasure”) with our Governor and Governor-elect, he said: “‘I was with the president of Finland and he said: ‘We have a much different—we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem.’

“Finnish President Sauli Niinistö addressed Trump's comments head-on on Sunday [11/18], asserting that he never touted the country's forest ‘raking and cleaning’ skills. 

“‘I mentioned [to] him that Finland is a land covered by forests and we also have a good monitoring system and network,’ Niinistö reportedly told Ilta-Sanomat, Finland's second-largest newspaper. He also recalled telling Trump that Finns ‘take care of our forests.’

“While Niinistö might have had a diplomatic response to Trump's comments, residents of Finland have not held back, taking to social media to mock Trump over his ‘raking’ comments with a new ‘#RakeAmericaGreatAgain’ hashtag.” Newsweek, November 19^th. Finnish social and mass media had a field day with Trump “reinterpretation” of his conversation with Niinistö, as the above images can attest. We pulled out of the Paris climate change accord. The EPA and the Department of Interior have purged “global climate change” from all their official materials.

Even when the Trump administration flirts with the notion that climate change might be real – as reflected in a 500-page report Draft Environmental Impact Statement (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, July 2018, Docket No. NHTSA 2017-0069), citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), aimed at discerning fuel and emissions standards for vehicles – there is no call to action despite the NHTSA’s own apocalyptic vision of the United States in the next century. First, the report admits climate change is real:

Global climate change refers to long‐term (i.e., multi-decadal) trends in global average surface temperature, precipitation, ice cover, sea level, cloud cover, sea‐surface temperatures and currents, ocean pH, and other climatic conditions. Average surface temperatures have increased since the Industrial Revolution (IPCC 2013a). From 1880 to 2016, Earth’s global average surface temperature rose by more than 0.9°C (1.6°F) (GCRP 2017). Global mean sea level rose by about 1.0 to 1.7 millimeters per year from 1901 to 1990, a total of 11 to 14 centimeters (4 to 5 inches) (GCRP 2017). After 1993, global mean sea level rose at a faster rate of about 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year (GCRP 2017). Consequently, global mean sea level has risen by about 7 centimeters (3 inches) since 1990, and by 16 to 21 centimeters (7 to 8 inches) since 1900 (GCRP 2017).

Global atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased 44.6 percent from approximately 278 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 (IPCC 2013b) to approximately 403 ppm in 2016 (NOAA 2017a). Atmospheric concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) increased approximately 150 and 20 percent, respectively, over roughly the same period (IPCC 2013a). NHTSA Report, Page S-1.

Second, the report concludes the impact climate change will be catastrophic. Here are just some of the conclusions: • Impacts on ocean systems, coastal regions, and low-lying areas could include the loss of coastal areas due to submersion or erosion from sea-level rise and storm surge, with increased vulnerability of the built environment and associated economies. Changes in key habitats (e.g., increased temperatures, decreased oxygen, decreased ocean pH, increased salinization) and reductions in key habitats (e.g., coral reefs) may affect the distribution, abundance, and productivity of many marine species.

• Impacts on food, fiber, and forestry could include increasing tree mortality, forest ecosystem vulnerability, productivity losses in crops and livestock, and changes in the nutritional quality of pastures and grazing lands in response to fire, insect infestations, increases in weeds, drought, disease outbreaks, or extreme weather events. Increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere can also stimulate plant growth to some degree, a phenomenon known as the CO2 fertilization effect, but the impact varies by species and location. Many marine fish species could migrate to deeper or colder water in response to rising ocean temperatures, and global potential fish catches could decrease. Impacts on food, including yields, food processing, storage, and transportation could affect food prices and food security globally.

• Impacts on rural and urban areas could affect water and energy supplies, wastewater and stormwater systems, transportation, telecommunications, provision of social services, incomes (especially agricultural), and air quality. The impacts could be greater for vulnerable populations such as lower-income populations, the elderly, those with existing health conditions, and young children.

• Impacts on human health could include increases in mortality and morbidity due to excessive heat and other extreme weather events, increases in respiratory conditions due to poor air quality and aeroallergens, increases in water and food-borne diseases, increases in mental health issues, and changes in the seasonal patterns and range of vector-borne diseases. The most disadvantaged groups such as children, the elderly, the sick, and low-income populations are especially vulnerable.

• Impacts on human security could include increased threats in response to adversely affected livelihoods, compromised cultures, increased or restricted migration, increased risk of armed Summary S-22 conflicts, reduction in adequate essential services such as water and energy, and increased geopolitical rivalry. NHTSA Report, Pages S-21/22.

Third, all of this work was created to justify the Trump’s administration’s rolling back Obama vehicle performance numbers of cars and light trucks built after 2020, an economic hardship that was hardly worth the effort. “While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

“‘The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,’ said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

“The document projects that global temperature will rise by nearly 3.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature between 1986 and 2005 regardless of whether Obama-era tailpipe standards take effect or are frozen for six years, as the Trump administration has proposed. The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986, so the analysis assumes a roughly four degree Celsius or seven degree Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial levels.” Washington Post, September 28^th.

But the NHTSA is hardly the only Trump-controlled federal agency reporting on the disaster we call “global climate change.” By law, federal agencies must file reports to various congressional committees. One such report is stirring controversy. The November 24^th Los Angeles Times explains: “The congressionally mandated report by 13 federal agencies, the first of its kind under the Trump administration, found that climate change is already being felt in communities across the United States. It projects widespread and growing devastation as increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, worsening wildfires, more intense storms and other cascading effects harm our ecosystems, infrastructure and society.

“The assessment paints a dire picture of the worsening effects of global warming as nearly every corner of the country grows more at risk from extreme heat, more devastating storms, droughts and wildfires, waning snowpack and other threats to critical infrastructure, air quality, water supplies and vulnerable communities. By century’s end, the report projects thousands of additional deaths annually from worsening heat waves and air pollution, as well as declining crop yields and the loss of key coral reef and sea ice ecosystems.

“Some $1 trillion in coastal real estate is threatened by rising sea levels, storm surges and high-tide flooding exacerbated by climate change, according to the report… The report also warns of economic consequences of inaction. Without substantial global emissions reductions and local adaptation measures, the report says, ‘climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.’”

Our climate policies, go-it-alone “America First” strategy, trade wars, presidential insults to leaders around the world make us either a rogue nation, a populist adhocracy with no footing in facts, or simply an untrustworthy laughing stock to most of the world. Exactly how will future generations describe this “escape from reality” moment in American history?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have long since given up explaining to my international contacts why the United States has elected to pursue such a powerful path of self-destruction.