Texas’ Losing Fight With Rising Sea Levels

In a previous essay on this blog I raised the concern about the misinformation and misunderstanding that various individuals convey to a poorly informed public.   It bears repeating here to address the recent damages that Tropical Depression Imelda had on Texas’ Gulf Coast 

Following Trump’s absurd notion to buy Greenland earlier this year, Trump apologist and Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen expressed a view typical of people who display little to no knowledge about human actions and their impact on global warming.   “What makes Greenland particularly valuable to the United States is global warming”,  Thiessen dismissively stated.  “The unavoidable receding of Arctic sea ice will open a new sea route in the Arctic that can be used for both commercial and military vessels." 

This near-sighted view that arctic ice receding is “unavoidable” is only because humans are doing very little to stop what’s causing it.  Thiessen and every other individual who looks at man-made global warming as an economic opportunity ignores the larger view of how increased green house gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere are doing far more to destroy life as we know it than adding to it.

Sea level rise (SLR) from global ice melts is just one of the destructive results of a warming planet.  With arctic and glacier ice melting at record rates, where does all this melted ice go?

Ask the people who live along the Texas Gulf coast.  After suffering catastrophic damages from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 they were hit this September with Tropical Depression Imelda that wreaked havoc on the area that some said was “worse than Hurricane Harvey.”  These storms have become more deadly in part from rapidly rising sea levels effected by melting ice and warming sea waters.

As sea ice melts and polar snow cover recedes, some of the water is released into the sea. In addition, it causes the Earth to become less reflective, which in turn allows the surface of the Earth, including oceans, to absorb more sunlight and become warmer. Warmer water temperatures will cause water to expand taking up more space in the ocean basins.

Sea level is rising more rapidly along the upper Texas coast than worldwide because some coastal lands are sinking. Studies by the EPA have estimated that along the Gulf Coast 1-foot rise in sea level is likely by 2050.  In general, for every 0.39 inches that sea level rises, 3.28 ft. of coastal land could be lost.  According to SeaLevelRise.org, “The sea level off the coast of Texas is already up to 18 inches higher than it was in 1950.

SLR will create irreparable damage to fragile ecosystems and Texas taxpayers will be faced with a $12 billion outlay just to push back on rising water along our coast in the form of “storm surge protections, flood mitigation projects and strategies to mitigate beach erosion, protect wildlife, and fortify sea walls.”

And if you think population growth around you is moving too fast for comfort now, look at how one study predicts rising sea levels in two Southern states will impact Texas communities.   Rising sea levels in Florida and Louisiana will create forced evacuations of upward to 3 million people moving to inland communities in states like Texas, according Mathew E. Hauer, the study's author.

Hauer says that “unmitigated SLR is expected to reshape the US population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants—even after accounting for potential adaptation.”

Take note Marc Thiessen, et al.  The need then for more accessible shipping lanes in the Arctic Sea will seem frivolous at best. 

We are a Community. Not an Island Unto Ourselves

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.” -  Abraham Lincoln

When recently asked by Stephen Colbert on his Tuesday 9/17/19 Late Night show if her Medicare for all plan would raise the income taxes for hard working class families, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tapped-danced around it explaining how “the wealthiest were going to pay more and hard working class families will see their costs go down.”   Her redirected narrative was an explanation of the cost savings these families would experience without conceding that it would require them to see higher payroll taxes to accomplish this.

When I see Senator Warren doing this I become as uncomfortable as some Trump supporters who hear him say the Syrian Kurds are better off after we abandoned them.  While the former is a form of obfuscation, the latter is a moral betrayal, but both are sources of frustration to voters that continue to generate distrust with elected officials

Everyone knows raising income taxes is what it requires to achieve Medicare for all.  Avoiding the obvious only gives your enemies an opening to dramatically twist the facts to fit some apocalyptic scenario that will play to the worst fears of their constituencies.

Everyone knows raising income taxes is what it requires to achieve Medicare for all.  Avoiding the obvious only gives your enemies an opening to dramatically twist the facts to fit some apocalyptic scenario that will play to the worst fears of their constituencies.

Democrats who support a single payer health care bill need to quit white washing this issue and be honest with the American people.  Polls show “that 70 percent of Americans now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. 

A December 2017 Gallup polled showed that 71% of those polled say our current for-profit healthcare system is "in a state of crisis" or "has major problems" and even reflected that “Republicans have become more critical in the past decade”.  

In her circumlocution of Colbert’s question she did spell out in detail how her plan would lower costs for middle income working families even as it raises their taxes.  It is those details that need to follow the affirmation that “yes, your payroll taxes will increase, but …”, so Americans can understand that though there may be no free rides, there is a plan here to fix our broken health care system while keeping more of their earned income.

Will it be a perfect system?  Of course not.  But then neither is the current for-profit system where the median amount spent annually on both premiums and out-of-pocket costs for households with employer provided insurance ranges from $1,500 (Hawaii) to $5,540 (South Dakota).   Health insurance providers often deny coverage whenever and wherever they can, give consumers fewer choices based on where they live and add to the long-term financial cost with burdensome record keeping imposed upon physicians and hospitals.

But even those experts who try to put a more positive slant on our current system realize that “there are some things that have to be imposed from above,”  according to Shannon Brownlee, senior vice president of the Lown Institute, a health advocacy organization.  

America ran dead last in a Commonwealth Fund, 11-country comparison on their healthcare systems.   Consumers are essentially left to defend themselves to battle outrageous rising costs left to them after doctors, hospitals and health insurance providers have negotiated how best to preserve their profits.  Since 1990, health care costs have risen 276 percent as wages, when adjusting for inflation, have barely grown at all.

Health Care coverage in America, like public schools, good roads & bridges and parks should be considered a right, not a privilege.  It’s an essential that only governments can provide at costs that eliminate price gouging and ensures that economic productivity isn’t stifled by a labor force burdened with out-of-control medical expenses.

The Hate You Harbor

A study earlier this year found what most of us already suspected – we are an unhappy people.“Our happiness, or what researchers refer to as ‘subjective well-being,’ is down” across the nation, according to a detailed study by the Gallup Organization and the healthcare information service Sharecare. From 2016 to 2017, America saw its largest year-over-year drop in well-being in the 10 years that Gallup has tracked these data. Furthermore, 21 states registered absolute declines in their levels of well-being, and not a single state showed a statistically significant improvement in 2017.”

Now there are a multiplicity of reasons that can be attributed to this sad state of mind but you have to wonder if something didn’t impact many of us following the 2016 election. Though there are those who are happy with the Presidential outcome it’s probably safe to say that many of those are more unhappy with the choice the felt they HAD to make rather than actually being elated about it.

Our political elections can have both deleterious and uplifting affects on our psyche, depending of course on who you voted for. But despite this, the anger quotient is likely to remain unchanged following the choices made in 2016. Not only for those who feel a sense of remorse that a con man has debased the office of the presidency with his puerile utterances and his affinity for authoritarianism, but also for those who must now defend him against that reality.

It’s easy to point out the foibles of a man who in his earlier life had some dubious success as a real estate magnate in NY City but who overtime let this success lead him to believe he was invincible and beyond reproach and in so doing let his ego over rule common sense and traded civility for derision of those who challenged his imagined perfection.

Trump has likely developed what psychologist refer to as a dark triad – “in personality, representing a perfect-storm combination of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. People high in the dark triad traits callously use people to their own advantage, seeing them as tools to exploit in order to get what they want.”  And here’s where the anger – and by default, unhappiness – comes into play for some of Trump’s supporters. Unless they are experiencing elements of the dark triad themselves they are forced to ignore it in their president simply because they voted for the guy and got caught up in his appeal that massaged their own fears and prejudices about Hillary, immigrants, socialism and white privilege before realizing who Trump really is deep down.

To many he is the fellow traveler they never found in the other GOP candidates back when the GOP had a soul.

Of course there will be those that reject this premise about the Gallup/Shareware study I’ve laid out here. And they may well be right. Yet the fact that the study shows our happiness quotient diminishing in light of Trump’s unfounded claim of America’s prosperity under his reign could well suggest that many are simply deceiving themselves to shield their inner disappointment as they become aware that they elected a carnival wheeler dealer rather than the savior he told him he would be.

Another (Vape)Smoke and Mirrors Charade Taking Place in the White House

 

 

Headlines about vaping expressing fears that it may become the latest national health problem are drawing concerns from the public, even Donald Trump supposedly and the First lady.

While holding court with his wife Melania and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in the White House on the 18th anniversary of 911, Trump announced that “We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth be so affected. People are dying” he said with no sense of irony.

Such concern falls on the deaf ears of those who see people die each day because they lack the financial means for life-saving health care services and the medications that are priced out of their income range. As the cheerleader who wants to kill Obamacare without having anything to replace it, Trump and the GOP will put millions in harms way who face life-ending conditions without the medical & pharmaceutical necessities that will keep them alive.

After failing to respond to the gun violence in this country and now threatening to revoke California’s authority to set auto emissions rules that will improve air quality for residents there, the president wants us to believe he really cares about the death of vape users?

If he shows as much concern for them however as he has for the lives lost from gun violence and extreme climate conditions resulting from an increasingly warm planet, the only action we’ll be seeing Trump taking will be his poor back swing on a tee box at one of his private golf clubs.

Unlike the fossil fuel and gun industries whose huge campaign contributions influence federal and state legislation to their benefit, the vaping industry is low-lying fruit for Trump that currently lack the impact of the NRA and the American Petroleum Institute.  Not wanting to leave any corporate donor behind however, Trump has agreed to ban only flavored vaping products — not those with tobacco-flavor.

Trump and other so-called opponents of vaping have already left the door open for this health threat to continue with their reluctance to ban all vape products. Advocates of vaping assure us that vaping doesn’t pose a health & safety risk. To appease them, Trump is willing to ban only flavored vaping products — not those with tobacco-flavor.

This neutering of a full ban is a meaningless gesture that keeps vape supporters in denial from the serious health issues vaping poses.  A growing body of research indicates that it may lead to negative health consequences, including damage to the brain heart and lungs, cancerous tumor development and preterm deliveries and stillbirths in pregnant women, according to the Center on Addiction. 

It is the same mindset that says the easy and abundant access to guns having nothing to do with the high suicide rates in this country or that adding green house gases (GHGs) like CO2 and methane in the atmosphere poses no threat because they already exist in nature. Never mind that what makes suicides easier and deadlier is also profitable for the gun industry or what GHGs that humans emit into the atmosphere are not the result of natural conditions.

It’s all about the Benjamins. In an unfettered free market system where industries whose products pose health and safety risks for the public, capital investments and their rewards for a wealthy few supersede the human capital who suffer from their existence.

As a member of that wealthy club Trump’s words will never match any action that requires confronting his comrades at the top.  Remember his 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp” of wealthy corporate lobbyists?

Another Case of Ignoring That the Emperor is Naked

“Power has to be protected from scrutiny. That's the principle of every dictatorship, of every autocracy.” - Noam Chomsky

It isn’t clear why Donald Trump stubbornly insisted Alabama was in line to be impacted by Hurricane Dorian.  The National Weather Service days earlier had already altered the trajectory of Dorian that initially included Alabama and confirmed that the state was no longer under the hurricane’s threat.

Was the man-child merely creating some kind of smoke screen to conceal the fact that after he cancelled a trip to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion, supposedly to show concern for Dorian’s devastation, only to be discovered playing golf over 8 hours for two days at his private course in Northern Virginia?

What’s extremely sad about this whole bizarre action is that Trump’s staff, as they do so often, failed to discourage the so-called leader of the free world from participating in a series of lies just to sustain the illusion that he’s never wrong.    Or were his underlings just trying to cover themselves for their utter failure to make the president understand the seriousness of Dorian’s destructive impact on our Caribbean neighbors?

Upon hearing from so many many Alabamans  who were reacting fearfully to Trump’s bogus forecast, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham felt compelled to tweet that Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from the hurricane.”  But then, rather than being dedicated to supplying the public with the most accurate weather information available, “a top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president.”  A disguised threat that seems to have come via Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to deter those NOAA staff who dared to correct Trump’s Alabama snafu, now being tagged as “Sharpiegate”.

That people charged with the public safety would diminish their role to protect the delusions Trump frequently creates for himself is scary to say the least.  It’s a frightening prospect to consider that the man who’s ultimately responsible for our national security seems more captivated with a fantasy world than the reality the rest of us exist in.

Former White House communications director and Trump ally, Anthony Scaramucci, recently suggested that “the president is now surrounded by people that are not going to tell him the truth, and they’re gonna confirm his biases, which may not be correct” saying that this could be “a recipe for disaster."

"The president likes to double down on stuff and he never likes to apologize ...”, Scaramucci said.  Does this not strongly suggest someone who is out of control and whose staff live in fear of speaking out when they see the error of the President’s comments?  This is the kind of behavior we expect from autocrats in countries like North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia where criticism of any kind could result in execution or imprisonment.

Fortunately, for now, we still have the rule of law that blocks any attempt by a would-be dictator to eliminate his adversaries.  But if Trump had his way, would locking them up be more than just a crowd chant at a Trump rally aimed at Hillary Clinton?  Would most major news sources be shut down?   The Republican National Committee itself is being hijacked by Trump operatives revealed recently by Greg Sargent of the The Washington Post.   Even Trump-friendly FOX news is being chided for stories that give the president bad press

How the hell did this country allow someone like this to hijack the once prestigious office of President of the United States?

Melting Arctic Ice is Not an Economic Window of Opportunity

Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen recently stated a view typical of people who display little to no knowledge about human actions and their impact on global warming.

As one of Trump’s apologists, Thiessen thought “the president’s idea of buying Greenland is far from absurd.”

“What makes Greenland particularly valuable to the United States is global warming”,  Thiessen dismissively stated.  “The unavoidable receding of Arctic sea ice will open a new sea route in the Arctic that can be used for both commercial and military vessels.”

This near-sighted view that arctic ice receding is “unavoidable” is only because humans are doing very little to stop what’s causing it   It’s the same shallow mindset that says more CO2 from burning fossil fuels will increase plant growth while ignoring that much of that CO2 also adds to the greenhouse effect that’s warming the planet at record rates. 

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro thought the fires consuming the Amazon Rain Forest in August were good for economic development, not comprehending the Amazon’s crucial environmental service to Earth’s oxygen supply, along with the forest’s ability to absorb CO2.

Thiessen and every other individual who looks at man-made global warming through rose-colored glasses diminishes the larger view of how increased green house gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere are doing far more to destroy life as we know it than adding to it.

Sea level rise from global ice melts is just one of the destructive results of a warming planet.  With arctic and glacier ice melting at record rates, were does all this melted ice go?

Polar and glacier ice melting is at historically rapid rates and sea levels could rise by up to an additional 4 feet by 2100—with roughly 1 foot of this increase occurring by midcentury—putting nearly 3 billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population that lives near coasts, at risk of severe flooding and erosion.

The Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica, referred to as “the doomsday glacier”, is on the verge of collapsing. That glacier holds two feet of sea level but more importantly, it is the “backstop” for four other glaciers which holds an additional 10-13 feet of sea level rise. When Thwaites collapses it will take most of West Antarctica with it. 

As arctic and glacier ice melts, the Earth loses its reflective capabilities to send the suns heat back out into space. Also, the permafrost in these areas that melt releases methane trapped thousands of years ago.  Methane is a GHG that when released into the atmosphere warms the planet 86 times faster than CO2. More warming means more flooding displacing millions of people that no economy of scale will be able to keep up with. Higher temps mean more forest fires that reduces earth’s ability to absorb CO2 and stave off the threat of global warming. 

Polar ice and land glaciers serve as the earth’s air conditioner. As they melt away, winters can become a thing of the past and summers, needless to say, will be life threatening.

As Earth’s ice masses rapidly deplete there will be no need for a new sea route in the Arctic because conditions will no longer be commercially viable that requires it. Those commercial and military vessels Theissen gleefully thinks will benefit from all this will likely be busy rescuing refugees forced to flee their communities or carrying life saving food supplies to areas that have had their natural resources wiped out by extreme climate conditions.