A stark reminder
From Inside Climate News, a discussion of the implications of Helene and North Carolina.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Abrahm Lustgarten, author of “On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America.”
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Helene’s huge size and speed are linked to increasingly hotter water in the Gulf of Mexico, and a stark reminder that with global heating, weather forecasts based on history are becoming [worse] guides to present dangers. Hurricanes have usually weakened when they make landfall, but to the surprise of many, Helene’s impact was just as devastating in the inland mountains of western North Carolina as on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
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CURWOOD: Preparing for that worst case costs a lot of money—and people think that is a waste of money.
LUSTGARTEN: I talk about this a lot, and it’s one of the more depressing elements of the climate adaptation story for the United States: The costs of adapting to climate change are going to prove so unfathomably expensive that I don’t think we collectively, or our governments, can really wrap their minds around that yet.
The flip side of what that investment will require is what I believe is the reality, the truth, that certain places will never be able to afford that adaptation. This may be a very long way into the future, and it depends on the frequency of disasters, but there will become places that are unprotectable, where we cannot afford to rebuild, where we cannot afford to build in the way that is truly resilient, because it is too expensive. We’re more likely as a society to spend that money and make those investments in the larger urban places where there’s a collectivization of the services and community support for the population that lives there.
We’re trending into the science-fiction realm here—or at least my imagining of the future—but when I try to imagine what a community that is failing on the far end of this transition looks like, the researchers that I talk to tell me to expect the disappearance of publicly provided services like garbage pickup, 911 service and emergency services, and the availability of insurance and those basic community fundamentals first. That might follow the decrease of a tax base that dwindles as the population shrinks, which also precipitates a drop in the quality of schools and a drop in the quality of infrastructure.
All of these things start to self perpetuate and spiral downwards, and then once you lose that consistency of services and economic stability, I think of it as communities kind of de-evolving back into what we would call a rural state, where eventually you have people who have to be self-sufficient and self-dependent in order to live there.
So, basically, going back to what human life was like 5 or 10 thousand years ago.
Nothing to do with global warming, climate change, or whatever other name you want to give to the climate scam – it’s the new and improved weather modification systems.
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/climate-change-is-not-a-cover-up-for-humans-intentionally-controlling-the-weathe-idUSL1N2RF1U8/
Now, back to the reality based world we live in …
Here, in the Wonderful Land of Oz we have experienced an exponential rise in insurance claims for flood, cyclone and fire damage. My insurance premium this year has risen 31%, partly to keep the pool full for future claims and to ensure the bosses get their bonuses.
But can people join the dots and realise that more claims leads to higher premiums? No, they babble on that the insurance companies are in on the scam and are using “climate change” simply as an excuse to gouge greater profits.
Nothing to see here. Unless you look at the greening of Antarctica, https://au.news.yahoo.com/satellite-images-show-antarctica-turning-113320745.html. No Johnny Appleseed there, but the advance of vegetation into new areas does not occur in a vacuum.
I guess the upside is that when Australia gets too hot we can all just grab our swags and head South.
Did you know the water’s turning yellow?
Have you heard the sky was falling down?
Did you see that guy fall out the window?
Did you know the circus was in town?
Have you heard about Bill Chamber’s mother?
She said, “A woman’s work is never done.”
And, oh yes, about that yellow water,
Have you noticed the color of the sun?
“Writing Wrongs’, Michael Nesmith
Pretty sure ‘cyclone USA’, ‘coastal erosion USA’, and ‘tornado USA’ are already experiencing this, if insurance premiums and bailout refusals from state governments are anything to go by.
Re #2
Certainly. There was a recent article about demographic changes occurring now and expected in the near future, as people young enough and with the ability to relocate will do so, leading to a population more dominated by elderly people who do not work, do not contribute as much to the tax base, and need more resources. This is already starting.
Re #1
I can’t regard mosses spreading in Antarctica as bad *in itself*. The problem is that it wouldn’t be happening without something that causes lots of bad things.
Homeowners in Florida are shell shocked at their insurance rates. I don’t think they’ve seen anything yet. Insurance companies don’t mess around with denialism when it comes to increasingly disastrous storms.