A Sinking Feeling
What do an Alaskan village and Manhattan have in common?
Hurricane Melissa just ravaged Jamaica and Haiti with sustained wind speeds up to 175 mph. It was classified as a Category 5 storm, but offers powerful evidence it’s time to create a new category on our overheated planet: Category 6. This article offers some perspective on recent Typhoon Halong and the questionable future of Manhattan.
On October 12, Typhoon Halong slammed the western shore of Alaska. The storm surge pushed houses off their foundations and set them afloat with people inside, destroying the community of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk among others. In Kipnuk 90 percent of structures were destroyed. Over 1,500 were displaced. High storm surge and hurricane force winds of 107 mph roared through the coastal region, particularly Kuskokwim delta communities and villages where the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers meet the Bering Sea.
Halong was a Category 4 storm which pummeled fifteen villages. This was no small matter. The Yukon-Kuskokwim delta is equivalent to the state of Oregon.
Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski warned it could take years for some of her state’s communities to recover. Lisa was a quid pro quo supporter of the $8 billion Biden Alaska Willow drilling project benefiting our friends at ConocoPhillips, a project so willfully stupid it could require refreezing CO2 and CH4 harboring permafrost to keep it from sinking into the ground. I wrote about that in Massive Alaska Willow Drilling Project Approved in March 2023.
I want to thank Lisa for her keen observation. You can see the money she has taken from the oil and gas industry here. I wonder if she’s connected climate change, oil burning and human tragedy yet? Or if she cares?
In a letter to Trump, Mike Dunleavy the governor of Alaska asked for the area to be declared a major disaster pointing out, “This significant storm affected thousands of miles of coast, spanning the Aleutian Islands to the North Slope.” Trump however, is hellbent on drilling the northern slope and the dementia riddled creature who decided to stop tracking climate disasters and fired hundreds of NOAA workers critical to climate science and weather forecasting. Even funding for simple, cheap and critical weather balloons has been hacked. In an article penned for The Conversation, expert Alaskan climate scientist Rick Thoman who publishes the Alaska and Arctic Climate Newsletter points out there have not been any upper-air weather balloon observations at Saint Paul Island in the Bering Sea since late August or at Kotzebue since February.
Mike, buddy, don’t you know we have a 90,000 square foot ballroom to build where the east wing of the White House once stood? It costs money to turn the People’s House into a tacky Mar-a-Lago golf style hotel for billionaire buddies and fellow dictators.
The people of these Alaskan communities are among the most undeserving victims of climate change in the world. Increased drilling of 1.56 million acres in the Alaska national wildlife refuge (ANWR) will also negatively affect the caribou they depend on. Wall Street sociopaths who fulfill their greed by destroying the planet deserve to be the victims. They trade in death. Indigenous people preceded whites on the continent by 12,000 years. Christian doctrine dating to the 15th century, was codified into law in the US, when the “Doctrine of Discovery” was invoked in an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating that Indigenous people had only rights of “occupancy,” not ownership. Their homeland was declared open for the taking and genocide was waged. Little doubt, Trump, Russell Vought and Stephen Miller intend to get that cleaned up in the history books.
Now an additional 1,500 of these people who walk lightly on the Earth go into winter with their communities destroyed yet again, likely forever. The sea will not stop rising as we, “Drill, baby, drill.” The people who ask for the least, their cultures based on simple, sustainable, subsistence lifestyles as usual destroyed by the church sanctified evil called colonialism.
But hey, we can attempt to save Manhattan
Parts of lower Manhattan sit just a few feet above sea level. Sea level is currently projected to rise as much as 1.9 meters by 2100, six feet. Trump’s ballroom cost was originally estimated at $250 million. Now it’s $300 million. Humans nearly invariably underestimate the cost of things. “You see what want to see and hear what you want to hear.” Points to those who can identify that quote in the comments section. That’s the nature of cognitive dissonance. In this 2018 article from CEO Magazine, NYC and Wall Street were estimated to be worth about $1.5 trillion dollars to the economy. That figure must have pertained to the NYC or New York state economy, as “search assist” generated a far higher figure. The article lists additional major cities in danger of succumbing to ocean rise including Shanghai, Venice, Miami and Alexandria, by no means definitive. It does demonstrate that the perps of our dilemma are completely aware, as they also recommend buying air conditioning stocks.
Loss of these economies, this continued circus of trading away the future by raping the present is at the least patent insanity, but likely far more nefarious. We have seen this administration eliminate USAid ensuring the needless deaths of millions. We see them attempting to eliminate SNAP and FEMA, and shredding environmental protections and climate science. We know they’re trying to eliminate Medicaid and Medicare. Make no mistake, these are the policies of a “soft” genocide. Is this a surprise in a country which has contributed $21.7 billion to be the primary enabler of genocide in Gaza? Do you think the Gestapo ICE raids will stop with brown people? They will come for me for writing this and you for reading it.
And those boats being blown up against world law in international waters? That’s a bullshit pretext for war with Venezuela for their oil deposits. We’ve been here before. This is a world of shrinking resources, particularly oil which is EVERYTHING, and we are ruled by a renegade regime.
Oh yeah, saving Manhattan
Spurred by $19 billion in losses from Hurricane Sandy, there’s a plan under review to save Manhattan involving a massive system of storm surge gates and seawalls, a $52 billion project, (article here, video here) to be carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers. It would begin in 2030 and supposedly be completed by 2044. Other efforts have already begun, ($1.45 billion article link, and $1 billion video link).
It’s no coincidence under our sick measurement of success, such projects will be counted as GDP, when in reality they’re enormous financial disasters that take away from the essentials that build a healthy society. Consider the funding of public education being destroyed by the Reich. Evidence? Look at Trump’s appointment of 76-year-old billionaire businesswoman, Trump ally and ex-wrestling executive Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. It’s not just revolting, it undermines our future and in February equally revolting Elon Musk and DOGE terminated more than $900 million in Education Department contracts.
And diking the shit out of NYC is disaster capitalism at its finest. Personally, I think those skyscrapers would make fine seawall rubble. Kidding, sort of. They’re too toxic to dump in the ocean, even though we dump everything else there.
The measurement of GDP is one of the reasons we need degrowth that redefines this terrible measure of “success.” Degrowth would replace GDP with GPI, a Genuine Progress Indicator. I contrasted degrowth with the inadequate and unrealistic Green New Deal (now lying in a smoldering pile as the planet burns) in Degrowth: The Vision We Must Demand in 2023. It’s worth a read to understand the basics.
We must stop burning fossil fuels
We can build seawalls all day and try to put out wildfires in seasons that grow longer every year, threatening our ability to extinguish them. Or we can demand profound societal change needed to eliminate the root cause, the burning of fossil fuels. Wanton consumption leading to extinction must cease. Governments are literally killing us with knowing malice at the behest of oligarchs. If we don’t fight tooth and nail NOW and take serious personal risk there is only one outcome. Huge strikes, permanent boycotts and a tax revolt are necessary. We’re fighting cancer and the tumor must be starved. The graphs below tell much of the story. There has never been such heating of the planet in remotely such a short time. We CANNOT adapt to this. Carry this message forward. Fight for your children and grandchildren. Fight for the wondrous beauty of this planet and the mystery of your own existence. There is so much better to be known and experienced.
These graphs illustrate the most immediate threat — fossil fuel heat
While 7 of 9 planetary boundaries are crossed, sheer heat poses the threat that must be addressed NOW. New drilling projects must be stopped. We must stop funding the malevolence of oligarchy and crony government sycophants. We have the numbers. We have the money. Do we have the courage?
Thank for giving it straight from the shoulder although I don't think many will care. They will go blindly on in their trance, either avoiding the obvious or not believing the scientists that warn them.
I asked a meteorologist about adding Cat 6. He quipped, "After Cat 5, what's the point?"