Our relentless release of heat trapping emissions by the burning of fossil fuels is loading our atmosphere with Carbon Dioxide and other heat trapping gases steadily warming the biosphere. I will march with Miami’s Resistance this coming Sunday because, we have the green technology to save ourselves from the worst impacts of climate change. At this point in time we just lack the will to implement it on a massive scale. I intend my resistance to force our “leaders” to have the political courage and wisdom to act before the worst case scenario of warming becomes reality. Perhaps the 2016 election will have provided the kick in the ass that we need to finally save the earth.
I do not suggest that humankind will escape great harm, even when we unleash the new green economy. My little corner of the world in South Florida won’t. We lost our chance to stop serious warming a long time ago. The ocean is too hot now, and we are in for a world of hurt as a result. But, we can minimize the damage somewhat, and perhaps save some of what is left of this gorgeous and miraculous world by acting now to eliminate every last molecule of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Camilo Mora, in an interview with Climate Central, stated the following :
“Imagine you are on a highway, and you spot an obstacle in the road up ahead, Mora said. “Should you step on the gas, or hit the brake?” Hitting an obstacle at a slower speed will minimize the damage to the car and its occupants, in much the same way as hitting a climate threshold at a slower speed would reduce the ramifications for biological systems, he said. “The speed at which you face that (obstacle) is going to make a huge difference."
We in Florida will not live in a safe world much longer. The damage from climate change to Florida will be catastrophic, of biblical proportions and irreversible. It will happen within the lifetime of children today. There is no credible way to sugar coat the climate impacts that this state will face. As recently as a few months ago I had held up hope that even though my home’s future is grim, the country at least recognized that moving ahead on climate mitigation and adaption is necessary to alleviate as much suffering as possible. Alas, the 2016 election burst my hope for progress. This new administration, along with their GOP congress, entered Washington DC with both barrels blasting at scientists of all disciplines. Trump is attempting to sabotage critical climate data and research and they have moved quickly on their top priority, to insure that the fight against planetary climate change is lost.
Climate Change enablers are well aware of who are most at risk from their vicious and relentless assault on our environment; indigenous people, people who live in poverty, and at-risk communities that are often populated by people of color. They know that people are dying from environmental degradation in increasing numbers worldwide, and yet that knowledge clearly does not concern them. When will we acknowledge that those who participate in a climate change cover up are guilty of genocide? As the Huffington Post noted: This goes beyond indifference. This is complicity in mass extermination.
The polar regions of Earth are unraveling quickly due to global warming. In fact, the arctic is the fastest warming region in the world. In Greenland, the ice sheets are melting from above and below and the great ice shelves that hold back the land ice from entering the ocean are cracking and splintering. The Antarctic ice shelves are rotting from the inside out from warm ocean water which carves rives and channels into the ice, weakening the floating shelves. But it is the tropics that will suffer the worst climate impacts first.
In Miami, just a foot of additional sea level could force mass evacuation, because the fresh water aquifers we depend on will eventually be poisoned by the intrusion of salt water.
Due to the porous fossilized sponge plateau that South Florida is built on, there is no seawall that can be engineered to prevent the oceans from inundating South Florida. It is projected that sea levels, up and down the east coast, will rise 6 feet by 2100. My region’s infrastructure will falter and fail long before those 2100 levels are reached. Most of the elevation of South Florida is at 6 feet or less, it’s easy to calculate the inevitable destruction and abandonment of one of the world’s great cities to the rising sea.
Scientists suggest that, in the long run, much of South Florida cannot be saved from rising seas despite recently installed infrastructure improvements such as giant water pumps and raising roadways. This new infrastructure has bought us some time. Scientists are encouraging policymakers to take advantage of this window, and start the planning process now for how best to deal with the northward migration of millions of people from Miami in the coming decades.
Yale 360 reports on a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on the large swaths of U.S. shoreline that will be uninhabitable by the end of this century due to sea level rise. That will result in waves of American climate refugees. They note that sea level rise will impact all 50 states in one way or another.
Sea level rise could cause mass migrations that will affect not just the United States’ East Coast, but reshape communities deep in the heart of the country, according to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change this week.
People leaving heavily populated coastal communities inundated by flooding will relocate across the U.S. by 2100, including to landlocked states such as Arizona and Wyoming that are “unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants,” the study found.
Florida (as well as the island nations of the Caribbean) will feel the heat of global warming more than any other state in the nation. The Miami Herald reports on a study from Climate Central and notes the Florida cities that will be enveloped in a smothering soupy air for more and more days out of the year as time goes on.
The sunshine state, according to a study released Wednesday by Climate Central,
tops the nation in the number of metro areas expected to see a dangerous combination of heat and humidity, driving heat index temperatures to 104 degrees.
By 2050, all 13 cities on the list, including Miami, Tampa, Naples and Vero Beach, will see 100-plus days a year of the miserable mix that can cause a host of health problems and even death — meaning more weather that feels like South Florida’s last few sticky, searing weeks.
In the future, as the planet warms, the number of dangers days will likely rise, the study found. Looking at 29 different global models, Climate Central found the average number of days would increase in 360 of the nation’s biggest cities. Half those with the biggest increase are in Florida, with Cape Coral and Fort Myers leading the pack. On average, the state now sees about 25 such days a year. By 2050, that number could be as high as 130, the study found.
Researchers from Perdue University found that most species, including humans, experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at a "wet-bulb" temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more. The heating of the ocean is putting billions of people at risk of death in future decades in a business as usual scenario. The Guardian reports on a new study that found the Earth's oceans are warming 13% faster than thought, and accelerating.
"Although areas of the world regularly see temperatures above 100 degrees, really high wet-bulb temperatures are rare," Huber said. "This is because the hottest areas normally have low humidity, like the 'dry heat' referred to in Arizona. When it is dry, we are able to cool our bodies through perspiration and can remain fairly comfortable. The highest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded were in places like Saudi Arabia near the coast where winds occasionally bring extremely hot, humid ocean air over hot land leading to unbearably stifling conditions, which fortunately are short-lived today."
The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios, but explored the impacts of warming. The challenges presented by the future climate scenarios are daunting in their scale and severity, he said.
"Whole countries would intermittently be subject to severe heat stress requiring large-scale adaptation efforts," Huber said. "One can imagine that such efforts, for example the wider adoption of air conditioning, would cause the power requirements to soar, and the affordability of such approaches is in question for much of the Third World that would bear the brunt of these impacts. In addition, the livestock on which we rely would still be exposed, and it would make any form of outside work hazardous."
While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates of business-as-usual warming by 2100 are seven degrees Fahrenheit, eventual warming of 25 degrees is feasible, he said.
"We found that a warming of 12 degrees Fahrenheit would cause some areas of the world to surpass the wet-bulb temperature limit, and a 21-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment," Huber said. "When it comes to evaluating the risk of carbon emissions, such worst-case scenarios need to be taken into account. It's the difference between a game of roulette and playing Russian roulette with a pistol. Sometimes the stakes are too high, even if there is only a small chance of losing."
Zoe Schlanger, writing in Quartz, reports on eco-anxiety and why this term should become part of our vernacular at this moment in time.
Depression, anxiety, grief, despair, stress—even suicide: The damage of unfolding climate change isn’t only counted in water shortages and wildfires, it’s likely eroding mental health on a mass scale, too, reports the American Psychological Association, the preeminent organization of American mental health professionals.
Direct, acute experience with a changing climate—the trauma of losing a home or a loved one to a flood or hurricane, for example—can bring mental health consequences that are sudden and severe. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, suicide and suicidal ideation among residents of areas affected by the disaster more than doubled according to a paper led by Harvard Medical School, while one in six met the criteria for PTSD, according to a Columbia University-led paper. Elevated PTSD levels have also been found among people who live through wildfires and extreme storms, sometimes lasting several years.
But slower disasters like the “unrelenting day-by-day despair” of a prolonged drought, or more insidious changes like food shortages, rising sea levels, and the gradual loss of natural environments, will “cause some of the most resounding chronic psychological consequences,” the APA writes in its 69-page review of existing scientific literature, co-authored by Climate for Health and EcoAmerica, both environmental organizations. “Gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion.”
I know that this is overwhelming, and difficult to wrap one’s mind around. It is easy to give up hope. We now have the additional burden of having to waste precious time with Donald “kill the satellites” Trump over peer reviewed scientific facts that scream we need to act now to save ourselves. Bill McKibbon noted in a recent NY Times op-ed “But there’s an extra dimension to the environmental damage. What Mr. Trump is trying to do to the planet’s climate will play out over geologic time as well. In fact, it’s time itself that he’s stealing from us”.
Miami’s story does not need to be everyone’s fate, but we do need to know it’s story so that we can learn from it’s experience. I believe that hope can be restored again when we march in the streets, call our representatives and attend their town halls. We stay vigilant. We stop this madman. We elect candidates that believe in social, economic, and climate justice. This week of action is just the beginning of a climate change resistance movement. I march because I believe that if the GOP is successful and we are to go down, we go down swinging. We owe at least that much of a fight to the children alive today.
Information on the March
Support the Daily Kos SciCli blogathon during the April 22-28 week of action promoting the April 29 People’s Climate March with stories on how science and climate change are affecting our lives and our planet.
For background on the SciCli Blogathon and the Week of action visit boatsie’s diary from 4/17, Besame’s from 4/20, and onomastic’s from 4/21.
Sign up for the Washington, D.C. march or find a march near you.
If you’d like to march with other readers of Daily Kos, visit Connect! Unite! Act! (7:30 AM Pacific) for march locations. Send Navajo a Kos mail or leave a message in the comments.
On April 29, let’s march for jobs, justice, and the climate!
2:30 pm: Cracks in Greenland ice-sheet may link up and break off DarkSyde
5:00 pm: Peoples Climate March just one piece of the resistance against lethal eco-policies Meteor Blades
9:00 am: People's Climate March next Saturday. Run on Sunday. RLMiller
2:30 pm: SciCli Blogathon: "I can't believe we're marching for facts" Edition (#ScienceMarchSF Photo Essay) citisven
5:00 pm: Climate change: Be Positive. It’s Important. John Crapper
Monday, April 24
2:30 pm: Pakalolo
5:00 pm: 2thanks
1:45 pm: samanthab
5:00 pm: Besame
2:30 pm: Dartagnan
5:00 pm: peregrine kate
2:30 pm: Bill McKibben
5:00 pm: WarrenS
2:30 pm: Tamar
5:00 pm: annieli
South Florida sister march locations.
- People's Climate March - Broward County April 29, 2017 • 2:00 PM George English Park1101 Bayview Dr Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304 Get Details & RSVP
- Miami People's Climate March April 29, 2017 • 1:00 PM Jose Marti Park 399 SW 4th St Miami, FL 33130 Get Details & RSVP
- People's Climate March Palm Beach County April 29, 2017 • 9:00 AM Near S. Flagler Drive and Southern Blvd across from Bingham Island West Palm Beach, FL 33401 Get Details & RSVP
- PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH April 29, 2017 • 10:00 AM 4 corners Airport Pulling & US41 3315 Tamiami Trail East Naples, FL 34112 Get Details & RSVP
- March For Jobs, Justice and the Climate April 29, 2017 • 2:00 PM Centennial Park 2000 W First Street Fort Myers, FL 33901 Get Details & RSVP