(unexplained musical accompaniment to this post)
As we watch the evisceration of many lawyers hired by a former president* and surround ourselves with the momentum of the upcoming midterm elections, the climate crisis — its time and its extension — waits for no one. Every other story in our politics is a sideshow now. Every other issue, no matter how large it looms in the immediate present, is secondary to the accumulating evidence that the planet itself (or at least large parts of it) may be heading toward uninhabitable.
Throughout the summer, the main climate story has been the global drought. Reservoirs dried up, rivers shrunk, and massive rock walls showed “bathtub rings” as signs of where all the water once existed. Lake Mead abandoned its forgotten gang victims, and rivers in the Balkans abandoned Nazi ships sunk nearly 80 years ago, one step ahead of the Red Army. It was all somewhat fun, but when you’re feeling thirsty, archeology is no substitute for water.
Now, though, it is autumn again, and running toward winter, and for the people who live near the seacoast and on the islands, it means that the season of cyclonic storms has come again; Hurricane storm systems are now larger, stronger and more severe than ever before, reinforced each year by the cumulative dynamics of the climate crisis.
By the end of this week, Hurricane Fiona — which tore through Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda, and Turks and Caicos — was regaining strength once again as it moved north and headed toward Nova Scotia and the rest of the region. Atlantic Canada.
From Washington Post:
Prior to Fiona, the Canadian Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch for parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ile de la Madeleine, and Newfoundland. “Hurricane Fiona is likely to be a notable weather event in eastern Canada this weekend” Tweet the center.
Usually, Atlantic Canada is battered by winter storms coming from the North Atlantic. Their encounters with tropical cyclones usually consist of bearing their remnants. At worst, a hurricane comes ashore in this area as a Category 2 storm, as was the case with Hurricane Juan. Even the legendary Nova Scotia hurricane of 1873, which appeared on roughly the same path that Fiona seemed to follow, which sank 1,200 boats and killed 500 people, may have come ashore as a Category 1 storm. If it hit Fiona as a Category 3 or 4, it would be a historic storm of that part of the world.
And Fiona has cousins lining up behind her.
The Fiona system is one of five different systems that meteorologists are carefully tracking in the Atlantic, which has returned to life amid the height of hurricane season. There is also Tropical Storm Gaston, which is centered 375 miles west-northwest of the Azores over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean. The Azores are subject to tropical storm warnings, and could see deteriorating conditions on Friday and remain harsh until late Saturday. In addition, a tropical wave emerging from the coast of Senegal in Africa could strengthen into a definite storm in the next few days. There is also turbulence midway between Africa and South America that can develop gradually. Another nascent storm that could deal a serious blow to the Gulf or the Caribbean is likely to be of great concern.
It would be crazy to see all the news about the damage done by these storms, about people being left homeless, without electricity or clean drinking water, which wouldn’t put these facts in the context of the climate crisis. This is the only way any of the other stories make sense. Storms are bigger, stronger, and staying strong longer — all as a result of the changes we’ve made to the climate. At this point, covering these massive weather events without mentioning the underlying dynamic that drives them is like covering war without mentioning explosives.
But at the other end of the world, there was a more catastrophic storm in which the climate crisis was directly implicated. The climate has changed the weather in this place, and it has also changed its history. It was a place where humans and polar bears depended for their livelihoods on sea ice that no longer exists, at least not when it was supposed to be.
In 1871, a fleet of 33 whaling ships in pursuit of bowhead whales became trapped in the ice off Point Belcher, a small outcrop in northwestern Alaska that reaches into the Chukchi Sea 100 miles south of Point Barrow. The captains agreed to abandon the ships, leaving behind merchandise estimated at $1.6 million, including an entire season of whale oil and baleen from fishing that year. Then 1,200 men, women, and children (captains used to bring their entire families on voyages of these songs) made a harrowing voyage through the Arctic wilderness as the pressure of ice slowly crushed the ships they had left behind.
And all this happened … in August.
Once upon a time, the ice was strong enough for humans and polar bears to go out and hunt for it every year before Labor Day. This was lucky for everyone involved, because the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea were the two places where typhoons died. They would come in the western Pacific, and club the Philippines, or Taiwan, or Japan, or the two Koreas. Then they would beat themselves to death on the sea ice, or if they could make it to shore, they would exhaust themselves on the hard permafrost behind the beaches.
Last week, the remnants of Hurricane Merbuck hit hundreds of miles off the Alaskan coast. There was no ice to slow it down and most of the permafrost had faded, so heavy rainfall made the ground unreliable. The houses came out of their foundations. One of them was seen sailing in the river until he hit a bridge. The hurricane came ashore with the strength of a tropical storm, if not an actual hurricane. From Alaska Public Radio:
Brian Bretschneider, a climate scientist with the National Weather Service, described Saturday’s storm as a “worst-case scenario.” Meteorologists predicted earlier this week that it will be one of the worst storms to hit the west coast of Alaska in recent history. And it was. “In some places, this is clearly the worst storm in living memory,” said Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Hundreds of people are sheltering across multiple communities with schools, which act as emergency evacuation centers. In some communities, the early actions of local leaders helped residents do what they needed to transport valuable vehicles and boats to higher ground. In other communities, efforts have been overshadowed by the storm. “This is the first time I’ve seen it this bad,” Alvina Mgalria said in Chufak. It’s just a lake all around, said Job Hill in Nabakak.
The climate crisis has wiped out all of Alaska’s natural defenses, so now it takes the full fury of storms that would not have made land intact in previous days. They would have spent on the frozen sea or collapsed onto the hard, rocky ground.
House destroyed by erosion in Shishmarev, 2006.
A while ago, I spent a week on Shishmarev, a barrier island in the Chukchi Sea a little north from where the typhoon hit two weeks ago. Due to the retreat of sea ice and the erosion of permafrost, Shishmarev, which has been somehow occupied for 4,000 years, is itself disappearing into the ocean. One day – if nothing changes, or maybe even if something happens – Shishmarev will disappear.
The people I interviewed have no doubt that the climate crisis is real. They know they can’t fish on ice the way they have for thousands of years. The season is shorter and the ice is less reliable. Every winter now, someone from the village or surrounding area gets lost due to a fall through the ice. The thaw of permafrost meant that the villagers lost what they called the “Eskimo freezer,” the practice of burying seal meat for preservation. When I was there, people in the village were working with state officials to build a road to a gravel quarry where they could collect materials to build a road that would allow them to go from the island. I found this almost unbearably touching and infuriating.
To stand on the bluffs above the Chukchi Sea, to look down upon a series of broken and destroyed seawalls that have already failed to curb the power of the ocean, and to consider that there are politicians in this country who are not willing to do anything about it. The climate crisis, or even those in denial about its existence, is to wish they could all come and stand these bluffs and look at the unrelenting sea.
Charles B Pierce is the author of four books, the most recent of which is idiot americaa working journalist since 1976, lives near Boston and has three children.
This content is imported from OpenWeb. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, on their website.
from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/in-the-end-climate-change-is-the-only-important-story/
No comments:
Post a Comment