Weather... or not

I always dreamed of a place with a view of the sea.

"And next up, your Tropical Storm Watch."

"And now more on Hurricane..."

Over the past few weeks I have begun to wonder if the Weather Channel was invented by a bunch of TV weather folks from Louisiana who simply had too much boudin and crackl'n.

Like all weather reports every one on the street, or water, thinks these are hit and miss at best. "These people are never right." But everyone keeps listening.

The marine radio is endlessly broadcasting a stream of concerns, mariners take note, coastal residence pay focused attention, for god sakes their lives could be on the line. That got me thinking, what if we had a global radio or TV network that could do the same, ya know, broadcast climate concern. Like the CCBN - Climate Change Broadcast Network? But would it be profitable? Who would listen? Would there really be an audience?

In 2010 I think we the CCBN would have done well - demographically. Let's see who might have tuned in...

• In January through April we could have counted on over 20 million Pakistanis to kick off the year.
• In April we could have highlighted an oily distraction that would have lasted well into hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico - keeping a couple billion of the planet captivated.
• In June and July the CCBN would have been flooded with broadcast opportunities as three-quarters of China's provinces were hit by flooding and 25 rivers saw record high water levels, causing the worst death toll in a decade, Liu Ning, general secretary of the government's flood prevention agency, told a news conference. Aside from the dead and missing, 645,000 houses were toppled and overall damage totalled 142.2bn yuan (£13.7bn). All the figures, Liu said, were the highest China had seen since 2000.
• In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined. We could have counted on over 20 million Pakistanis tuning in.
• September it started showering in SE Australia and by December was flooding most of the entire east coast of the continent - Australia had its wettest September-to-November spring on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. - a good portion of the population, say 20 million - they are still watching.
• In early November I could have reported live from Costa Rica as flooding from the snapped off tail of Hurricane Thomas killed and destroyed - but good ratings, all 4.5 million Ticos tuned in.
• December washed out the old year in Brazil by killing several hundred and drawing over 2 million local viewers

In other news we could have broadcast reruns the global Climate Conference in Copenhagen, where the world's nations gathered to get down to the serious business of addressing the potential possible impact of change in the climate if it actually happens... and is caused by human actions.

Of course, it will be a rerun, the show was previous cancelled due to lack of action. Nations, especially the USA, China and India were looking for a program with more monetary mystery and intrigue. They complained that they need programming that really bites into their economies before it's worth tuning in.

Well its a New Year, 2011, this year we may have something for them. A fresh new show from DownUnder called 'Flood the Market' The show follows the current ruin of a nation due to catastrophic flooding. Lots of action, chaos, death and destruction, AND the economic Apocalypse that should get their rapped attention. Here are a few of the episode recaps:

• The rain may cut the quality of more than 40 percent of the country’s wheat crop, according to estimates by National Australia Bank Ltd. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third-largest mining company, said today coal mines in central Queensland state had partially resumed operation after rains.
• Macarthur Coal Ltd., Aquila Resources Ltd. and Vale SA said last week they had declared force majeure, while Xstrata Plc shut part of its rail system and said it would use stockpiles to supply customers. Force majeure is a legal clause invoked by companies when they can’t meet obligations because of circumstances beyond their control.
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia cut its estimate of wheat exports to 14 million tons in 2010-2011, from an earlier 16 million tons. “Many in the industry suggest the disruptions to the harvest this year and the implications for grain quality are the worst in a lifetime,” Luke Mathews, a commodity strategist at the bank, said in a report yesterday.
• Queensland Sugar Ltd., which ships more than 90 percent of the country’s sugar, also today cut its export forecast to 2.2 million tons because of weather, compared with an outlook earlier in the year of as much as 3 million tons.

As 2011 flows forward so do the storms and floods, for investors in the new network it looks like the CCBN would financially stay afloat.

• TODAY From Brazil - The region has already seen the largest rainfall since 1967, according to the government’s Inmet meteorology agency. Teresopolis, the largest and hardest-hit city, where at least 228 people died, absorbed 259 millimeters (10.2 inches) of rain in the past 10 days, while the average rainfall for the month of January is 290 millimeters, according to Inmet.
• The floods in Rio are the world’s fourth-worst disaster involving floods and landslides over the past 12 months by the number of deaths, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, or CRED, a Brussels-based independent research institute that collaborates with the World Health Organization.
• TODAY - More than a million people in Sri Lanka are suffering from massive flooding described by the government as the worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever. The killer Russian heat wave — setting a national record of 111 degrees — would happen once every 100,000 years without global climate change. Super Typhoon Megi with winds of more than 200 mph devastated the Philippines and parts of China. Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, according to W.H.O. A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP (news service) runs 64 printed pages long!

Weather or not climate change is real it would be nice to have some real scientific evidence to back up this climatic hyperbole.

Bit more cherie climate summary here.

Inalienable Obligation

Certain phrases have followed me around my life like a shadow - there beside me, stretching out from me, inseparably connected, married to me, even before they were there, as they were becoming know, as they are occasionally forgotten.

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one"

- Eleanor Roosevelt

An "obligation" to be an individual.

Wow. Could there be more powerful a concept.

We don't generally think of the obligation embedded within our right. Taking for granted the first too often seems to obliterate not obligate responsibility.

As I work on the Gulf Coast and each trip leads me on a journey continually further in pursuit of a truth that so much money, time and energy has been spent to conceal, I think a lot about my obligation. To myself as well as others.

I keep searching for a balance. A balance? Yes, in my own life and in my global life, I think. And then I remembered the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, "Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."

Not just a right, but an inalienable obligation. As such maybe there is no balance - balance suggests two or more objects held in some level of equilibrium. If right and obligation meet at individual then all are one and the same. My own life and my global life are simply Life, as I live it.

Obligation of individual to me means putting self on hold.

Today I hear that at the global summit in Cancun, Mexico the parties have accepted that there can be no global agreement on global climate change, reduction of greenhouse emissions targets.

"The rising ocean raises questions, too: What happens if the 61,000 Marshallese must abandon their low-lying atolls? Would they still be a nation? With a U.N. seat? With control of their old fisheries and their undersea minerals? Where would they live, and how would they make a living? Who, precisely, would they and their children become?" - more on the disappearing Marshalls

At what point is that Life what I focus on first? At what risk of discomfort, inconvenience, nuisance, reduced fortune, maybe even frustration? When do the decisions I need to make I actually become the decisions I make? When do I realize I am that individual with an inalienable obligation?

More: UN chief warns climate talks are too slow

Anna's not convinced of global warming - but definitely climate change

Okay, I'll admit, this is a rant of sorts - but it's keeping me warm, my fingers moving and the blood boiling.

As I sit here doing research for another project, one a world away in terms of importance to the eventual legacy of humankind, I'm shuttling forth and back to the kitchen every half hour to switch out the magic elixir, the sugar water of life for a trio of flying lilliputian. Three Anna's hummingbirds, along with a host of other avians have decided, or perhaps by my maintaining their food supply, been coaxed into staying the winter. This week they may be seriously reconsidering their decision. In a bone-chillingly rare bash of icy windy weather the temps have plummeted into the teens at night and disparately grasp for the 30 degree mark by day - this is far from the norm for Portland. Or am I dillusionary and this is the new norm and I clinging to an old norm out of denial?

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition was a story with climatologist, some would say evangelist, James Hansen:

Scientist: Urgency Needed On Climate Change Action

Just as I was finishing his op-ed in the NY Times, the NPR story began I was clicking on the BBC online news to a story on the same topic:

This decade 'warmest on record'

According to the World Meteorological Organization the first decade of this century is "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began some 160 years ago.

Well, the tiny Anna's hummingbirds sitting at the warm sugar water feeders outside my window would adamantly dispute that fact. They would surely ask - "Where's the heat? Bring it on!"

And that's the issue. I have been saying for years that until people wake up in the morning, put their hand on the door and get burned because it's too hot out (or alternately freeze) then can't leave their homes for days on end, they are never - NEVER - going to get it, climate change.

In reaction to Hansen are other, not all conservatives as you think - like Paul Krugman, in his own piece

Unhelpful Hansen

What is clear to anyone who has traveled this planet for the past quarter century of more - and I'm not just talking about to one frigg'n conference after another - really traveled the back roads, back alleys and forgotten corners - is that we are in deep climate change shit! And the only way to even hope of shifting the course is stop the bullshit conversation about "what ifs" and get on with changing the way we function with our planet. Millions of people, poor people, die everyday on this planet because of the changes we have brought about in the last century, and Mr. Krugman they don't give a damn your thoughts on cap and trade - "What the basic economic analysis says...", or what your magical chart shows - to them it's all "crap and trade offs".

And that is the crux part one - it's climate change - not just warming. A year ago I was in India and farmers were complaining about drought in one part of the country and too much rain in another - in each case the experience was not the norm. This is no longer about economic survival - it is about survival.

Part two - we don't really give a shit. If we really did there would be no doubt where to spend the $700 billion the Obama Administration just got back from the bank bail out - DEVELOPMENT OF NON-CARBON RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES. It's, as Hansen says, about too much carbon being pumped into the atmosphere. And the average person in the developed countries (read - over consuming) and developing countries (read - trying to consume more) has no clue WTF is going on - or cares frankly. This week is the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, another summit where rich nations will promise to do a little and promise to give just enough to keep poor nations from complaining too much. And the pontificated proclamations on changes regarding the climate? At least Copenhagen will benefit from all the week of hot air - it's just above freezing there this week.

Which brings me back to that possible case of - clinging to an old norm out of denial? Denial: "a state in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence."

Krugman closes his blog post with:

"Things like this often happen when economists deal with physical scientists; the hard-science guys tend to assume that we’re witch doctors with nothing to tell them, so they can’t be bothered to listen at all to what the economists have to say, and the result is that they end up reinventing old errors in the belief that they’re deep insights. Most of the time not much harm is done. But this time is different.

For here’s the way it is: we have a real chance of getting a serious cap and trade program in place within a year or two. We have no chance of getting a carbon tax for the foreseeable future. It’s just destructive to denounce the program we can actually get — a program that won’t be perfect, won’t be enough, but can be made increasingly effective over time — in favor of something that can’t possibly happen in time to avoid disaster."

In this case I agree with you - sorta. "...this time is different." Neither of you should be professionally in this discussion - it's not about economics or physical science - it's about biology! You should be only in it as living human beings. The only discussion we should be having is about things living and dying. Other wise the dieing will eventually be very tormented and excruciating because we run out of drinkable water, clean air, arable soil, livable space. So, "a program that won’t be perfect, won’t be enough," - sorry, this time is different, we need perfect and we need enough.

And what about real change on the climate - the only real change will be too uncomfortable regardless if we accept it or reject it - hotter hots, wetter wets, drier drys and tomorrow it will be clear and friggi'n cold again here and the Anna's better evolve in a hurry - I'm running out of warm sugar water.