JOE ROMM, - Think Progress
Stephan: I am publishing this piece because I take it as an important datapoint on an important, indeed critical trend: public awareness of what climate change really means. For SR readers it's old news, I have been publishing and commenting on climate change since 1991. But it takes time to move mass consciousness, and articles such as this one are signs that it is happening. So, on balance, I consider this good news.
San Francisco
Credit: Wikipedia
A new study and a new book both argue that the worst-case scenario for global warming would literally render the planet uninhabitable.
The book is entitled “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming” and is written by New York Magazine editor David Wallace-Wells; it is an expansion of his controversial viral article published in July 2017 with the same title. As of Feb. 26, it is number 11 on the Amazon best-seller list — a rarity for any climate book, but perhaps another sign of the growing interest in strong climate action.
The book, published just last week, makes the case that without dramatic climate action, we are headed for catastrophic warming of 7°F (4°C) above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100 — a world of ever-worsening megadroughts and endless food shortages.
But, as Wallace-Wells warns, even the unlikely worst-case warming scenario of 14.4°F (8°C) is possible if we keep on a path of high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions — and if the climate response is at the high end […]
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E.A. CRUNDEN, - Think Progress
Stephan: Exactly as predicted in SR starting more than five years ago. This is going to be an enormous problem for coastal cities, and how they handle it will have a huge effect on the nation's economy.
Floodwaters surround a home on September 6, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Over a week after Hurricane Harvey hit Southern Texas, residents are beginning the long process of recovering from the storm.
Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty
As flooding becomes more and more commonplace across the country as an impact of climate change, a new study argues that strategic property buyouts in flood-prone areas could protect communities by enhancing flood resiliency.
Communities see both environmental and economic gains when cities preemptively buy out properties near one another, especially if those properties are near wetlands or green space, according to new research published Thursday by the Nature Conservancy and Texas A&M University. These areas also benefit from buyouts that occur in advance, the study argues, as opposed to after flooding has taken its toll.
“Protecting open space and critical natural resources are becoming important tools with which to mitigate the adverse effects of flooding,” the study notes. “However, land acquisition and buyout programs are almost always initiated in a reactionary, ad hoc manner […]
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Tom McCarthy, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: A far-right judiciary is going to be one of the principal legacies of Mitch McConnell and Trump, supported by a Republican-controlled Senate. And even that Senate has not been able to swallow some of the monsters Trump has nominated. But we are going to live for a generation with those who do get the office. Here is a good assessment of what is going on. It has profound implications for the future wellbeing of America.
Supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attend the State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington DC on 5 February 2019.
Credit Doug Mills/AFP/Getty
Many Americans watching the turmoil in US institutions and political norms are yearning for the day when Donald Trump is no longer president. But whether he leaves after 2020 or 2024, Trump has built a legacy in one vital area that can be expected to stand for decades, long after his Twitter feed has fallen silent, analysts across the political spectrum agree.
That legacy comprises the 89 judges, and rapidly counting, that Trump has nominated, and Senate Republicans have confirmed, to serve at all levels of the federal court system. They are taking up posts from the district courts (53 Trump nominees confirmed out of 677 total) to the appellate courts (34 out of 179) to the US supreme court (two out of nine). Put together they form a kind of conservative judicial revolution that could impact all aspects of American life.
In […]
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Jane Mayer, Staff Writer - The New Yorker
Stephan: In my opinion, the FOX propaganda operation is the principal architect of hate and fear in the United States, the shadow of real media, the dark side. With a very sophisticated command of the psychophysiology of politics, it exploits for profit the fears, resentment, and anger of older, less educated Whites. Fox's alignment with Trump, who instinctively understands these same weaknesses in the American population, because he shares them, is tearing the country apart.
Jane Mayer's essay is the best assessment of FOX and what it is doing that I have read.
Illustration by Tyler Comrie; photograph from Getty
In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications […]
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E.A. CRUNDEN, - Think Progress
Stephan: The good news is that about two-thirds of Republican voters now accept that climate change is real, although they are not sure how serious an issue it is. Of course, that means 33% still don't believe in it at all, or that human activity is responsible.
The bad news is that the Trump administration which numbers amongst the disbelieving one-third is doing everything they can think of to make it worse. Is that a political polemic? Sadly, no, that's the data speaking. Here's the report. If you don't help to get Republicans out of the government in 2020, your children, and their children are going to think very badly about you because they will have to live with the consequences of Trumpian stupidity.
Emissions rise from smoke stacks at Pacificorp’s 1000 megawatt coal fired power plant on October 9, 2017 outside Huntington, Utah. It was announced today that the Trump administration’s EPA will repeal the Clean Power Plan, that was put in place by the Obama administration.
Credit: George Frey/Getty
The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to weaken or dismantle climate efforts would increase CO2 emissions by more than 200 million tons annually, taking a severe toll on public health, according to a new report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at New York University’s (NYU) law school.
Sectors responsible for nearly half of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are benefiting from rollbacks and weakened regulations at the expense of U.S. residents, according to the report. But state attorneys general across the country have played a key role in countering the the president’s quest to repeal or weaken several key environmental regulations.
“Donald Trump ran for president saying he was going to be a change agent and unfortunately he has. He […]
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