As I have been listening to a President who mostly whispers, shuffles to the podium, mixes up his words with increasing frequency and freezes on occasion, I see what most of the rest of the United States sees: more than mere signs of aging, but for anyone who has watched an elderly parent or grandparent sliding steadily into dementia, we’ve been here before. It can take a long time for those symptoms to be significantly life altering, but there is never a clear timeline. It could be me sooner than I might accept, but the nation is watching him, seeking signs that whatever is ailing President Joe can be diagnosed and tracked.
As the disasters of Trump’s legacy, manifest in his post-term Constitution-repealing Supreme Court and in the “nothing we should do about it” horrific climate disasters that only seem to intensify, begin to accumulate… as virtually every elected Republican and Republican candidate illustrate… MAGA is very different from the pragmatic world where our best and our brightest accept science, where we tolerate… actually celebrate… our differences use them as building blocks to grow. If this summer isn’t hot enough for you, if the litany of roiling climate disasters is not powerful and destructive enough for you, you are in luck. You ain’t seen nuffin’ yet!
Two truly awful choices for most of us, but if the Constitution and our planet have significance for you, there is no choice but for the lesser of two negative candidates. One will muddle through, if not replaced, surrounded by qualified experts, and fight for those two super-important values. The other will undo the minimal climate change efforts begun and unravel the system of checks and balances that define democracy. What is strange, or perhaps comforting, is that the three primary concerns voters on both sides of the aisle prioritize are, in order, individual rights, healthcare and successful containment of climate change (Time Magazine, July 3rd).
So today, hurricane season has already begun with a mega-disaster ,and the wildfire season is already decimating hundreds of thousands of acres, forcing evacuations and incinerating forests, buildings and life’s treasure with alarming speed. Writing for the July 6th Associated Press, Seth Borenstein looks at what caused this early hurricane attack… and what that cause tells us about the rest of the summer storms we can expect: “Hurricane Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water the Atlantic and the Caribbean are in right now and the kind of season ahead, experts said.
“Beryl smashed multiple records even before its major-hurricane-level winds approached land. The powerful storm has acted more like monsters that form in the peak of hurricane season thanks mostly to water temperatures as hot or hotter than the region normally gets in September, five hurricane experts told the Associated Press… Beryl set the record for earliest Category 4 with winds of at least 130 mph — the first-ever Category 4 in June. It also was the earliest storm to rapidly intensify with wind speeds jumping 63 mph in 24 hours, going from an unnamed depression to a Category 4 in 48 hours…
“Beryl has taken an unusually southern path, especially for a major hurricane, said University at Albany atmospheric scientist Kristen Corbosiero… ‘Beryl is unprecedentedly strange,’ said Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters, a former government hurricane meteorologist who flew into storms. ‘It is so far outside the climatology that you look at it and you say, ‘How did this happen in June?’ ’
“Get used to it. Forecasters predicted months ago it was going to be a nasty year and now they are comparing it to record busy 1933 and deadly 2005 — the year of Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis… ‘This is the type of storm that we expect this year, these outlier things that happen when and where they shouldn’t,’ said University of Miami tropical weather researcher Brian McNoldy. ‘Not only for things to form and intensify and reach higher intensities, but increase the likelihood of rapid intensification. All of that is just coming together right now, and this won’t be the last time.’
“Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach called Beryl “a harbinger potentially of more interesting stuff coming down the pike. Not that Beryl isn’t interesting in and of itself, but even more potential threats and more — and not just a one-off — maybe several of these kinds of storms coming down later.’… The water temperature around Beryl has been far above normal, which ‘is great if you are a hurricane,’ Klotzbach said.”
Trump tells us this is just a normal cycle, that we cannot afford to spend serious federal funds to mitigate the problem, even as mega-billion-dollar destruction cumulates and increases significantly every year. What’s the point, he says, since we need other nations to play ball anyway. Yet we don’t even have statistics on the millions of Americans who suffer significant degradation in their health, many dying years before their time, from the increase in sustained heatwaves.
The world needs not only a serious reduction in carbon-based emissions; we need to embrace carbon removal to reduce what is already out there. Or we can Trumpize the probability, waive our arms frantically and pretend as if there isn’t a problem. As for hurricanes, those seem to embrace red states the most; yet heat is an equal opportunity tormentor. We have Bill Gates co-funding a new generation of liquid salt-based nuclear powerplants, Wyoming (coal country) inviting green energy investors to build there, and we are discovering ways to innovate carbon capture very efficiently. Writing for the July 2nd FastCompany.com, Adele Peters describes on one surprising successful effort:
“Right now, using machines for ‘direct air capture’ is an expensive process. Removing and storing a single ton can cost as much as $1,000. With around 40 billion tons of CO2 emitted by humans each year, the nascent industry can’t easily scale up to address the problem. But Capture6, a startup partnering on the new project in Palmdale, California, is taking a different approach… The new process ‘has the potential to dramatically reduce or even eliminate the cost of the carbon dioxide removal,’ says Ethan Cohen-Cole, Capture6’s CEO… The company integrates its tech into existing industrial sites. In the new project, which recently broke ground, the tech will also tackle a problem for the water treatment plant. When it processes wastewater, the plant will end up with tons of brine—something that’s usually costly to get rid of. Capture6 will use that brine to create a solvent that captures CO2 from the air.
“‘Our carbon removal system was designed from the beginning as a way to facilitate decarbonization, not just remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,’ says Cohen-Cole. The water treatment plant will also save emissions by avoiding the need to transport brine waste elsewhere. In total, he says, the process saves so much energy throughout the supply chain that it offsets its own direct energy use. It’s also designed to run on renewable energy.
“The tech also generates more drinking water that otherwise couldn’t be extracted from brine. (The water treatment plant will inject all of its clean water underground into aquifers, so it will get into the water supply indirectly rather than being piped into homes.) By generating more water, eliminating the need to dispose of brine, and producing a replacement for chemicals at the plant, the startup may be able to fully fund CO2 removal without relying on selling carbon credits.” Biden: Climate change is real, and we can do something about it. Trump: Neah!
I’m Peter Dekom, and how many other solutions and choices are out there, or do we really want to continue watching our insurance rates soar, our world altered for the worse and our disaster federal expenditures fly way past any savings we falsely believe we are making?
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