2024-10-14
Are climate delusions in Florida slowly breaking apart?
Dave Rogers, a long-time resident of Florida who is NOT delusional about the reality of the climate emergency and posts often about how it is playing out in Florida has three excellent posts this morning that I want to note and comment on.
First, Florida is Flat:
You don't get the kind of extreme, swift-water flash flooding that happens in mountainous regions where water rushes downhill. Instead, it slowly drains through the watershed. If the soils are saturated, it very slowly drains, eventually reaching the rivers and streams, which rise as they, themselves, move slowly, ultimately making their way to the sea.
He links to this YouTube video:'Higher than we've seen in 6 decades': Why is the Withlacoochee River still rising?I was struck by the ignorance of people interviewed and the fact that an explainer is needed for the locals. Not to pick on them as I think this is a larger problem: people are far too ignorant of the world they live in. Whether it is their local ecological systems and watersheds or the big picture of planetary systems and political systems. No one should be surprised at what we are seeing. Whether it be the larger pattern shifts caused by climate change or how those shifts are manifesting in localities.
I can't speak to the situation elsewhere but in the US we seem to have fallen into a deep rut of ignorance in regards to basic science literacy. Perhaps we've always been in it?
Next, the aptly titled Governor Dumbass. DeSantis continues to discount the role of climate change in hurricanes recently saying "there’s nothing new under the sun" in regards to the intensity of recent years' hurricanes. Dave's comment:
He's a fool. There is something new under the sun. THIS CLIMATE.
This climate, the one we inhabit today, has never existed before in the history of this planet. This amount of atmospheric CO2, with these polar caps, with this landscape has never existed before in this history of this planet.
Should I repeat that again?
Yes, there have been hurricanes before.
But there have never before been hurricanes that formed in these climatic conditions.
DeSantis and the political class, most notably the Republicans, ignore and downplay the science because it runs counter to the fossil fuel lobby to which they have sold themselves and their party. But let's be honest, the American people have long romanticized the car and car culture. We have decades invested in the "American Dream" of oversized houses with multi-car garages filled with oversized vehicles. When we're not working, we're busy shopping, eating out, or otherwise entertaining ourselves in suburbia or traveling on jumbo jets.
So we've gone along for this ride, and even those that now accept the reality of climate change are still deep in the delusion that the two parties of the political class are, all previous evidence to the contrary, going to solve the problem. But if we look around and ask, based on anecdotal observation, how many "liberal" Democrats are willing to protest or otherwise change the way they live in a meaningful way to reduce climate emissions?
In his third post, Blindness, Dave writes:
I'm glad that this type of coverage is becoming, at least temporarily, more prevalent. All of this was foreseeable. But developers and the counties that benefit from the property taxes only saw the money, not the risk. We're over-developed, and it's probably uninsurable at this point...
I don't know what's going to happen, but we're going to find out over the next 12 months, as insurance companies pull out of the market, go under, raise premiums and fight the state and policy-holders. This is a slow-moving catastrophe.
One thing the report doesn't mention is that many people can't afford to leave. They're tied to jobs, mortgages, and schools. They won't be able to sell their homes because they'll be uninsurable, so that keeps them stuck here.
He links to and refers to this video on YouTube that covers a variety of issues.
Indeed. As he says, this is a cascading climate catastrophe. Even more, it is a cascading societal level human catastrophe. It is now in motion and far enough along that I don't see it being stopped. The carbon already in the atmosphere combined with the predictable lack of progress guarantees decades of temperature increase.
Year to year, decade to decade, we will watch as complex human systems unravel. For the next 10 years those in Florida will watch as a housing market dependent on affordable insurance and steady lending falls apart.
Other regions will be hit with their own extreme weather events or events caused by long-term but extreme changes such as extreme drought. Less dramatic but equally important will be the affects upon food production by the breakdown of predictable weather patterns that agriculture depends on. Because the scope is planet wide there will be no escaping this, there is no predictable safe zones.
But many will continue to be surprised or pretend to be surprised as it all unravels around us.
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