When it comes to arguing about the proven and increasingly-lived reality of climate change, deniers have one big asset on their side: climate change is really complex and slow. It affects different parts of the world differently, and in ways that can be very unexpected. This is because the earth’s climate is big and complex; in fact, one could say it is all-encompassing.

But that can make it easy for deniers. They can sneer and say things like “Oh, so climate change makes it hot some places and cold in other places? That’s really convenient.” They also sneer about how “climate change” replaced “global warming”, as if scientists were caught in a lie and so changed the name; as if no one was saying that global warming would change the climate.  A simple lie is easier to digest than a complex truth.

(Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump was one of those idiots who tweeted about global warming every time it was chilly out. He was even one of those idiots who would use record-setting colds across the entire country as proof everything was fine. There’s a reason he had instant appeal to the GOP voters.)

Anyway, this is to say that if you don’t believe in climate change, this post is good fodder for your argument.

(Note: the invaluable folks at Circle of Blue linked to much of this in their daily newsletters; that’s where I got it from. Don’t want to take credit for it)

Too Much Water, Not Enough Infrastructure

 

 

NEW ORLEANS — Heavy weekend rainfall in New Orleans overwhelmed the municipal pump stations, leaving parts of the community flooded, and some officials say they’re not satisfied with the city’s response.

“Are our city pumps working as they should?” Councilman Jason Williams said, according to local news reports. “If we can’t handle a bad storm, then what will we do when there’s a hurricane?”

What indeed? Now, heavy rain can’t be blamed on global warming, nor can hurricanes. But the intensity of both is modeled to increase as the oceans heat up. That’s not conspiracy or far-fetched. Even the dimmest denier admits that there is such a thing as “hurricane season”, and it isn’t when the water is coldest.

This just highlights the dangers of climate change in our most vulnerable cities, and our lack of preparation in how to mitigate its effects. We know that climate change is going to hit hardest in poorer countries ill-equipped to handle environmental and demographic shifts. But it will happen in America too. And our politics, indeed our culture, rarely gives precedence to the poorest and most vulnerable. Except poor Gulf communities, black and white (but especially black) to be decimated.

Even with good planning, water can and will overwhelm. We don’t invest in infrastructure, and we don’t take care of what we have. As a species, we’re spectacularly ill-equipped to handle enormous issues. As a wild and fragmented democracy, America might be especially ill-suited for it. That just means we have to keep fighting, though.

Flash Drought: Too Little Water

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The drought plaguing eastern Montana and much of North and South Dakota came on quickly and is intensifying, leading ranchers to sell their cattle and farmers to harvest early whatever crops that have grown so far this summer.

Just three months ago, no areas of moderate drought were recorded in the Northern Plains region by the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. But July’s soaring temperatures and lack of rain quickly parched the soil and dried up waterways, creating what climatologists call a “flash drought.”

Now, 62 percent of North Dakota, more than half of South Dakota and 40 percent of Montana are in severe, extreme or exceptional drought, according to the drought monitor’s weekly report released Thursday. There are also pockets of drought in the Southern Plain states of Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas.

In Montana, 12 percent of the state’s land is experiencing “exceptional drought,” meaning widespread crop and pasture losses and water-shortage emergencies, mainly in the northeastern part of the state.

“We would expect to see conditions that bad once or twice in 100 years,” said Deborah Bathke, a climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center and a co-author of the drought monitor.

I’ve never heard the terms “flash drought”, or “exceptional drought” before, but, like “hydro-political strife”, is just another one of those damn things we’ll have to get used to. These are baking regions, and are prone to drought, and we (as a political entity working together, through the government), worked to transform them from arid to arable.

And it worked! But like the high-water mark of the Colorado, it won’t last forever. It couldn’t last forever. And climate change will accelerate that, with unknown political, economic, and agricultural impact.

Up the Wall! 

 

 

The Secretary of Homeland Security has determined, pursuant to law, that it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border of the United States near the city of San Diego in the state of California.

Yup. In one of his last acts as DHS head, General Kelly (who is a Wise and Steadying Hand, remember) waived the need to study environmental impacts of a border wall. This isn’t the whole wall, of course. But it sets an precedent.

Trump’s wall will be (among many other things) a potential environmental disaster. It’s going to be in the middle of a floodplain, which, as we’ve emphasized, doesn’t care who is in the White House, or what a “Mexico” is.

Everyone involved in the wall, advocates like Kelly included, know that it is a political disaster. Now they don’t even want to know if it will be an environmental one. The rush to get it up is as unseemly as its end goal. But that it could be a disaster on the enviornment has to be seen, for these jackals, as a feature.