Florida is Sinking
and the President-Elect
Doesn't Believe Climate Change is Real
and the President-Elect
Doesn't Believe Climate Change is Real
click on the graphic above for a larger view
Trump's Climate Science Denial
Clashes with Reality of
Clashes with Reality of
Rising Seas in Florida
By Donald Trump’s account, scientists have tricked Americans into accepting that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
“I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” he told the Miami Herald on one of the rare recent occasions when he has talked about it.
Meanwhile, Miami is among the world's most vulnerable cities to climate change and a few blocks from the Miami Beach hotel where Trump spoke, water flooded over a seawall last year during the highest autumn tides, blocking traffic on one of South Florida’s main evacuation routes. The city is now elevating that street and many others as part of a $500-million program to protect itself from the rising ocean.
Coastal communities in the biggest presidential battleground state are adapting not just to the threat of global warming, but to the reality of it.
Trump’s rejection of climate science portends one of the most consequential changes in direction for the nation should he win the presidency. And Floridians are starting to reconsider that possibility as Trump's temporary momentum in polls slides as Florida voters are reminded that (as the Huffington Post so eloquently puts it) "Donald Trump regularly incites political violence, is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S." and build a wall on the entire continental border with Mexico.
The Republican nominee wants to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate pact, a nearly worldwide agreement to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming.
He has called for scrapping Obama administration rules that cut carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. He plans to lift constraints on oil, gas and coal production, saying trillions of dollars in economic activity will follow.
President Obama, whose legislative agenda on climate change was thwarted by Republicans in Congress, pushed the boundaries of executive power to fight global warming, leaving his successor ample room to reverse course.
Follow Phillip
on instagram
on facebook
on twitter
Like Obama, Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, regards global warming as an urgent threat. She has released plans to reduce carbon emissions, promote renewable energy and assist coal regions in recovering from the economic devastation brought on by the industry’s decline.
His position puts him at odds with top energy companies. Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP all acknowledge that burning of fossil fuels causes global warming. They encourage reduction of carbon emissions.
“Donald Trump lives in a parallel universe where the facts established by the scientific community to him don’t exist,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Climate Change Communication program at Yale University.
“The fact is that climate change is here and now. It’s not some faraway, distant problem that we’re not going to see for a generation or two.”
Carbon pollution has caused record-high temperatures globally in each of the first six months of 2016, according to NASA. Last year was the planet’s warmest on record.
With Florida, Georgia, Virginia and other coastal states beset by more and more high-tide flooding as the sea level rises, Trump has been muting his argument that climate change is not really happening. A shrinking minority of Americans, mainly conservative Republicans, share his opinion, polls show.
The impact is especially notable here, in the densely populated and nearly flat Miami region, which is built mostly on drained swamps.
Over the last decade, streets in low-lying neighborhoods have begun flooding during the highest tides, usually when the moon is full around the fall equinox. The storm drain system, built on the assumption that gravity will carry water downward into Biscayne Bay, can’t function when the tide rises above street level.
Trump was on the other side of Miami Beach at the oceanfront Fontainebleau Hotel last month when he spoke with the Miami Herald. He acknowledged that climate does change, but not as a result of human activity.
Asked about local efforts to cope with the rising sea level, Trump said, “If they’re doing the roads, and if they want to make them higher, I think that’s probably not the worst thing I’ve ever heard, if you’re going to do them anyway.”
Miami-Dade and three nearby counties have joined forces in a climate change compact. Using the 1992 local sea level as its benchmark, the group projects that it will rise 6 to 10 inches by 2030, and 31 to 61 inches by 2100. Scientists expect the pace to quicken as the melting of polar ice accelerates.
The rising ocean — it’s already 3 inches higher than it was in 1992 — has begun pushing saltwater into the shallow layer of highly porous limestone that contains the region’s groundwater. Some contaminated drinking wells are being replaced.
Alarmed by the threat to Florida’s giant tourism industry, Miami business leaders have championed the public works overhaul.
Trump, who owns several resorts in South Florida, has taken contradictory stands on climate change. In 2009, as world leaders gathered in Copenhagen for talks on a global climate pact, he joined other business leaders in signing an open letter to Obama and Congress.
Published as a full-page ad in the New York Times, it called for “meaningful and effective measures to control climate change” and warned of “catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet” if they failed to act fast.
Trump also endorsed the science of global warming in his May 2016 application for a permit to build a seawall at his golf resort in County Clare, Ireland, saying it was threatened by rising seas (see below).
But from 2011 to 2014, Trump made at least two dozen comments on Twitter mocking global warming, a theme he occasionally reprises in his campaign for president.
“We can’t destroy the competitiveness of our factories in order to prepare for nonexistent global warming,” he tweeted in November 2012. “China is thrilled with us!”
The next day, he said the Chinese created the concept of global warming as a ploy to snatch U.S. manufacturing jobs. (Just a joke, he said years later.)
“I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing,” Trump wrote in 2013. “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” Weeks later, he called it “a total con job.”
Trump’s commentary soon turned profane. In January 2014, he tweeted: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.”
A version of this post appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 18, 2016 by Michael Finnegan titled "Trump's climate science denial clashes with reality of rising seas in Florida"
We've Read:
Mr. Trump applied for a permit to build a seawall for one of his golf courses in Ireland. The application specifically cites global warming as a reason the seawall is needed. But on the Presidential campaign trail Mr. Trump publicly says he does not believe in climate change and calls it a "hoax." Also: Earth, Wind, & Liar: Trump's Global Warming Lies
Reps. Curbelo and Ros-Lentinen have joined bipartisan caucus to deal with global warming. Miami is among the world's most vulnerable cities. Meanwhile Marco Rubio and Donald Trump both voice skepticism about climate change.
Centuries ago, a vast tidewater glacier covered all of Glacier Bay. By 1750 that ice began to retreat. Over the past 260 years it has withdrawn nearly 60 miles to the head of the bay.
Reps. Curbelo and Ros-Lentinen have joined bipartisan caucus to deal with global warming. Miami is among the world's most vulnerable cities. Meanwhile Marco Rubio and Donald Trump both voice skepticism about climate change.
Coffins unearthed by early summer 2016 floods in Denhan Springs, Louisiana.
Photo © 2016 William Widmer for The New York Times
Catastrophe is the mother of invention, a lesson few other states have had to learn quite as harshly as Louisiana (take note Floridians). With an ever-sinking coast and a front-line position for the fiercer hurricanes and other weather threats related to climate change, the state has begun to advertise itself as a disaster laboratory, a place to figure out how to combat storm surge or how to resettle imperiled communities—or how to keep track of the dead.
There's Not Much We Can Do About Another Stolen Election (remember 2000)
Until 2018 Mid-terms. However, we can protest racism and fascism and boycott Trump products and states that enact regressive statutes like North Carolina and Mississippi
Southern conservative legislatures pass discriminatory legislation aimed at LGBTs under the guise of religious freedom. More: Filming Boycott in North Carolina. Travel Boycott Against North Carolina's Hateful New Law.
Tech Companies Condemn Mississippi for Passing Bigot Protection Law
Mississippi Passes Anti-Gay Bill
Hollywood Demands a Veto
Hollywood Demands a Veto
Georgia is the only Southern State to abandon its quest for so-called bigot-statutes, or, the headline we prefer: Georgia Backs Down: Threatened with Losing The Walking-Dead, Georgia Backs Down
and speaking of hate speech. . .
