The Witness Chronicles July 26, 2023

Apocalypse now, bad polling for wack jobs, and are you safe? Probably not

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Yes, this week is a bit alarmist but I also celebrate three nasty politicians whose approval ratings are plummeting. You’re going to learn about something called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and how climate weather is hitting everywhere, not just Florida and the west.

As always, this newsletter highlights a few things I wrote this past week on Medium.com, sans paywall. 

Btw, be nice. It’s a lot easier than the alternative.

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Yet Another Major Climate Issue and This is a Big One

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

Yes, that is a mouthful but it actually is a major ocean current that runs from the tropical Caribbean north along the Atlantic coast of the US and then east to northern Europe. The Gulf Stream is a part of it.

This current of warm water determines the climate for the areas around it, creating mild weather and helping to control rising ocean waters. And it is likely going away, creating apocalyptic changes in the weather for the northern half of the western hemisphere.

We’re talking about an ice age in Europe and Great Britain, rising waters in northern US cities like Boston and New York and general climate chaos everywhere. This could happen any time after 2025, according to recent research.

Details here. I suggest you give it a read, if only to prove I am not crying wolf here.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is one of those relatively invisible oceanic currents that we take for granted. Now warming conditions, and the injection of huge amounts of cold fresh water from melting glaciers in Greenland, threaten its existence. And that means our existence as a functional civilization is on the line.

Yes, that is a drastic statement. But as a person who has followed the climate change story for thirty years, this action has always been under scientific study as a distinct possibility and now it appears that it is no longer a possibility but is now a probability. 

Before I start ranking on the evils of the oil and gas industry, it is important to understand that their research was the first to define this possibility as far back as the nineteen sixties. They conducted research known as scenario planning that was designed to help them anticipate all kinds of events, both environmental and political, so they could prepare themselves with various survival strategies.

Their strategy for this one was to bury the story and launch a disinformation campaign, including massive political contributions (bribes) to keep it buried while they raked in as much profit as they could squeeze out of the global economy.

That was one of the most horrifying business decisions imaginable. They sold our future and their own children and grandchildren’s future for short term gain. And now their choice is going to possibly destroy much of civilization as we know it.

Generally when I write these doom and gloom climate articles, I try to suggest actions we can take, individually and as a society, to cope with them, but I’m stymied by this one. Its repercussions are simply unimaginable and truly apocalyptic. End of the world stuff.

Guess I better dust off my Doom is Upon Us Sign and find a busy street corner. That’s about the best I can do when faced with stuff like this.

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Trump, DeSantis, and Kennedy Jr All Slipping Fast

Are we getting sick of lies and negativity?

The Force is weak in these ones. And the GOP in general are seemingly fading, though I know JFK Jr is ostensibly a Democrat. But he is seen by the right wing media as a means to siphon votes from Biden, or was. As he spouts off dangerous nonsense about vaccines and conspiracies his little moment of fame is fading fast.

DeSantis is reportedly trying to shift direction in his failing campaign. One new angle is his military service, but there is a big problem. He served as an attorney in Guantanamo Bay and may have been a party to torture.

That might not be something you want to highlight.

As for the ex-president, his obsession with the 2020 election and his indictments, now and in the near future, are starting to hit his numbers. One poll has him losing to Biden even if there is a third party slate. That’s new and may dash the hopes of the right that something will swoop in and save him.

The loser label seems to be starting to stick.

It’s very early so we have to take all of this with a handful of salt, but it doesn’t look good for any of them. One factor is bad news fatigue, something the Republicans don’t seem to be considering with their ongoing onslaught of investigations, accusations against each other, failure to actually do anything positive for voters, and general negative communications strategy. It’s getting tiresome and we have a long way to go.

Things are looking much different on the Democrat side of the race. As I’ve mentioned previously, their strategy seems to be, keep your powder dry and let the other side rip each other to pieces. Meanwhile, let the positive effects of Biden’s accomplishments start to add up, including infrastructure spending and the rapid fall of inflation.

A couple of notable numbers that directly affect voters, all voters. Gas prices are down by over 27% despite serious price gouging by oil producers. Inflation is at 3%, down from a high of 9% in 2021. Both of these items have been negative talking points on the right, talking points that are rapidly becoming irrelevant.

A wild card in this is climate change which is finally coming to the forefront as an issue, particularly in hard hit red states where the GOP is still sticking to denial despite their own voters getting clobbered by heat, fires, storms, and floods almost daily.

You’ll hear more from the Dems about their spending devoted to trying to slow this disaster, while the Republicans fiddle in the House. No matter where you are in the country, climate and weather are at the forefront of every conversation, regardless of political opinion. Denial is finally looking terrible as a policing for the Republicans.

If you regularly read my stuff, you know that this collision of politics and climate science is something I write about regularly. And those pieces are by far my most popular, indicating a lot of worry and fascination with the topic. No big surprise when even us northeasterners are starting to see our share of the calamities. 

Biden’s Chips Act has revitalized the US semiconductor industry with over $500 million in private investment and federal seed money of $200 billion. This will reduce our reliance on China for chips that drive everything from dishwashers to F150s. 

The good news is out there and it’s not minor. You just have to look for it. The optimist in me sees a wind shift going on in American politics. It’s a subtle one but any sailor will tell you they require action early. And spotting them can help you win the race.

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A Lot of Places Who Thought They Were Safe From Climate Change Just Got a Wake-up Call

I know, I live in one

I like to write about climate islands, places that seemed relatively immune from climate-driven weather that takes lives and ruins homes and businesses. More and more people are looking for these secure spots to rebuild lives destroyed by things like floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat, which accelerates all those things.

A lot of those places experienced a shocking wake up call recently, including Upstate New York where I live. Places a stone's throw away from Rochester, NY, my hometown, got hit with torrential rainfall this week that didn’t just break records, it demolished them. Like 5.5” of rain in one hour. 

There are places in the US that don’t get 5.5” in a year.

No one can prepare for that when it has never happened before. The prime example right now is Vermont, that unbelievably picturesque small New England state where the worst weather event might be a blizzard, which the ski crazy state loves.

We used to love our blizzards too. Snow day! Until early last winter when Buffalo, sixty miles away, got 55” and more than 45 people died. Meanwhile we got 2” where I live, not even shovelable. And during that deluge this week in a town less than an hour's drive from here, Rochester got zero, nada.

It’s been easy to be complacent about extreme weather when it seems to always take place somewhere comfortably far away. It makes it easier for the deniers who claim extreme weather is normal for places like Florida and they should know better.

Believe me, after Ian a lot of Floridians now know better as they can no longer get home insurance and the insurers they had are going bankrupt or pulling out, leaving them with the wreckage of a life.

A Florida government official said the insurers were leaving because of ‘wokeness’. It’s scary that this guy apparently knows nothing about how the insurance business works. Assessing risk is their business model. Too much risk and they are out. They’re not in business to lose money.

Nothing woke about that. But this illustrates the willful ignorance of these politicians when they deny science. They sound like morons.

I still believe that in the context of things, my region is a much safer place to live. But recent events, including days when Canadian forest fires made our air so unsafe that healthy people were told to avoid going outside, are changing minds . It smelled like a campfire out there.

Those fires are not in Western Canada, they are directly north of here in dense woods above Montreal and Quebec which have been historically too wet to be vulnerable to fires. But the lack of forest management, and a growing number of dead trees created so much fuel that fires became inevitable.

Historically, but not anymore.

Now our own backyards look a little less friendly.

The sad thing about all these disasters is we can’t do a damn thing about them. That time has passed, for good. We have to look for ways to live with a planet that is now much deadlier to humans than at any time in our history. The only way may be to find ways to get to higher ground and help others get there.

It’s hard to think about the future when you’ve watched your house destroyed in a flood or fire. But we have to be proactive about creating life in a new world. And don’t be Elon Musk spouting gibberish about living on Mars. He has so much money he no longer has any grasp on reality as the rest of us know it.

We can’t live on Mars. The radiation alone would kill you.

And that is a growing problem in our country. Those with enormous resources are buying up that higher ground and denying those less fortunate access to it. They don’t need insurance. They can pay cash many times over. The part I don’t understand is their fear of helping others.

In the rest of the world those escaping death and destruction for a better life are called refugees, a term which has become a derogatory description of a lower caste. But more and more Americans are going to find themselves as refugees in the literal sense of the word as they search for a way to a better life.

We have to help them. We could be next.

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Cheery, right? We’re having a summer here where every afternoon we get a rapidly moving thunderstorm with torrential rain, and then the sun comes back out. Yesterday we got 2.5” of rain in an hour. I happen to love thunderstorms and this was a great one. Huge claps of thunder, lightning, and sideways rain. As long as I’m inside, it’s all good, but I did get caught in one earlier this week.

Five minutes and it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of water on me. Which I suppose someone did.

I try to avoid total doom and gloom, being an optimist, but this disruption of the AMOC has no upside and it seems inevitable. I guess we just wait and watch.

Headed to Hudson, NY for a weekend in the country, and then a few days in Manhattan, two of my favorite places. And I’m taking a train which for me is a weird kind of bliss. The Grasshopper is still on deck for Sunday.

Until then, did you write today?

Martin Edic

2034 words

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