The Gods Must Be Angry

Trey Smith

Over the past month or so, I think I've come to a greater understanding of why so-called primitive societies believed that the weather reflected the emotional disposition of their god or gods. We have had several nasty storms roll on shore and I get to witness nature's "wrath" during my early morning beach excursions with my dog, Jaz.

There have been several mornings near sunrise when Jaz and I stand near the south jetty watching in awe as the churning sea crashes into the rocks and, were we to stand too close, we would be lashed by the waves as well. Combine this with pelting rains -- even snow on two occasions -- and knock you off your feet winds and it is easy to see why the indigenous people of this region (to identify but one group) believed that these climactic conditions signified that god/gods was/were pissed to hell!

I sometimes wonder the same thing myself.

"An Alternative World"

Trey Smith

When I read a rundown of military assets being sent to rescue survivors and deliver supplies, I feel grateful for the logistics officers marshaling their expertise, but also struck by the fact that the tools we're using were designed to fight wars and are being temporarily repurposed. I wonder what a fleet as well-funded as the U.S. military's would look like if it were optimized for natural disaster response.

How many victims would have been reached already?

The stories about inaccessible areas of the Philippines, where authorities haven't yet seen the damage — let alone helped the survivors — makes me reflect on the global drone fleet, and imagine an alternative world where it was optimized and expanded to spot victims rather than insurgents, delivering drinking water rather than Hellfire missiles.

I don't mean to go all John Lennon on you. This isn't a naive call to eliminate the U.S. military and spend its entire budget augmenting the International Red Cross.

But given how predictable it is that there will be deadly storms, catastrophic earthquakes, and other natural disasters besides, you'd think we'd spend more on preemptive measures that would help lower the death toll and speed help to survivors. Alas, our psychology as individuals and nations is to dig into our pockets only after the fact, when the descriptions of mass graves and hunger reach us.

It is good to act then. It would be better to act sooner.
~ from Is This the Best Humanity Can Do for the Philippines? by Conor Friedersdorf ~

If asked to sum up in brief the primary reason I started this blog in January 2005, it would be because of my desire to imagine "an alternative world", one aptly expressed through the eyes of Laozi and Zhuangzi. As far back as when they (or others) wrote their famous tracts, humanity has wrestled with cultures fixated on satisfying the egoic desires of the elite. In "an alternative world", ALL of this planet's creatures and life forms would be valued and war would have no purpose.

A report is out that survivors in typhoon-ravaged central Philippines stormed a government owned rice warehouse because...they were starving. It is a sad commentary that there are people in this world who starve everyday despite the fact that enough food is produced to feed everyone. Though there is enough fresh water, there are folks who die of thirst. There are people who are born into grinding poverty and, when death comes (sooner than it should), have never had the opportunity to escape its grip.

I don't understand how ANYONE could be satisfied with the kind of world we have created. It is a world of a few mega winners and a wide swath of mega losers. To sit by silently is, to me, the greatest sin of all.

If Only Man-Made Climate Change Was Real

Trey Smith

When typhoon Haiyan - known in the Philippines as Yolanda - pounded into the islands of Samar and Leyte at 4.40am after picking up speed on a 900-mile track across the Pacific, the US navy's warning center, JTWC, in Honolulu, calculated its winds to be gusting at up to 235mph (380kph).

This would make it the fourth most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded and possibly the strongest to have ever hit land. By comparison, St Jude, the storm that hit in southern England last month, had winds gusting to 99 mph.

As Filipino communities calculated the flood and wind damage done in the 25-mile-wide path of the storm, meteorologists questioned claims that Haiyan was the strongest ever to make landfall. "All we can say at this stage is maybe. The estimates of wind strength and central pressure are just that – estimates – albeit from well-attested satellite techniques developed over decades. Without ground observations right in the centre of the track we can never be totally sure," said Julian Heming, tropical prediction scientist at the Met Office.

Haiyan is the third Category 5 "super typhoon" to hit the Philippines since 2010.
~ from Typhoon Haiyan the Biggest Yet As World's Tropical Storms Gather Force by John Vidal ~

I've asked this before, but how many dots are needed before the vast majority feels confident enough to start connecting them?

Typhoon Haiyan, in and of itself, doesn't prove that man-made global warming is real -- I use the term "man-made" because males are primarily responsible -- but the number of records set for violent storms over the past decade or two should cause people to be concerned -- very concerned. We keep hearing and reading of record droughts, tornadoes, blizzards, floods and hurricanes. Why have many of these records been set in the past few years. There has to be SOME sort of explanation.

Scientists -- not pundits, politicos, religious nuts or the folks who benefit financially from denying climate change -- have zeroed in on the primary cause. That would be human society as it is operated in the industrialized world. They issue dire warnings after another and yet the issue somehow is still open to debate?

What will it take to put this picture into a clearer focus? Really! What will it take?

A Dud of a Blow Job

Trey Smith

After listening to a week's worth of nasty predictions about the weather, we really dodged a bullet. While South Bend was hammered by the storm -- strong winds and nearly 5 inches of rain in 24 hours -- it fortunately didn't make it as far north as Ocean Shores. While our crew of 4 had to deal with rain and wind on Moving Day, it was nothing out of the ordinary for autumn on the Washington Coast.

Though the weather wasn't half the impediment that we anticipated, it still was a long and back-breaking day. My old body is so worn out that I'm taking today off.

~

After we finished moving our furniture and belongings into our new apartment, we treated our two helpers to a big lunch at a local pizzeria. When Della and I lived in Aberdeen about 6 years ago, this restaurant was our favorite place to eat in Ocean Shores. On the drive up, we raved about the quality of the food and both of us were REALLY looking forward to eating there.

Well, we did eat there...but the great pizza we remember wasn't so great! In fact, on a scale 1 - 10, I'd rate the pizza we had at about a 5. It just goes to show that you can't always judge the present by the past. Things change and not all those changes are for the better.

Blow Job

Trey Smith

As I pen this post Friday night, the forecast for tomorrow -- moving day -- is about the worst forecast for this type of thing. They are predicting that we may receive upwards of 3 - 4 inches of rain to go along with a high wind warning and flood watch. As to the wind itself, here is what the National Weather Service predicts:

Saturday Wind Strength: South Winds Of 30 To 40 Mph With Gusts Of 50 To 60 Mph For Coastal Communities And 60 To 70 Mph Near Beaches And Headlands.

As it so happens, our itinerary begins in a coastal community -- South Bend -- and then moves to north to a beach community -- Ocean Shores. So, chances are that tomorrow (well, today, when you read this) is going to be one hellacious day. Not only will I be fighting the wind while driving over the Willapa Hills in a 16 foot moving van, but once we reach Ocean Shores, it will be a stern challenge to keep our furniture and belongings relatively dry as we move them from the parking lot of our new apartment complex to our apartment (about 50 yards away).

You know, we made every effort we could to move before the rainy season started. But this is how life goes sometimes. For the most part, the overall process was out of our hands. For example, as I've already shared with you, we got screwed over by our Neighborhood U-Haul dealer and so we didn't complete Phase 1 of the move today (remember, I'm writing this on Friday) as planned. Had we been able to secure the U-Haul on Thursday, we would have missed the violent storm that will roll unto the southwest Washington coast on Saturday.

While the confluence of events that has us moving on the worst day possible (over the last 120 days or so) is irritating and frustrating to max, it is what it is. Getting mad and losing one's cool won't change the weather or make the day go by any better. We will head out early in the morning and hope for the best. That's about all we can do at this point.

Global Warming? Nah!

Trey Smith

Two months before my community and so many others were overwhelmed this week by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, appeared onstage in nearby Loveland with representatives of the fossil fuel industry. During that event, Lepore — an industry-lawyer-turned-public-official — proceeded to berate citizens concerned about the ecological impact of fracking and unbridled drilling. More specifically, he insisted that those asking fossil fuel development to be governed by the precautionary principle are mostly affluent and therefore unconcerned with the economic impact of their environmentalism.

Ignoring public polling data that documented the broad support for tougher environmental regulation, Lepore was making the classic populist argument against the precautionary principle. In this instance, an industry puppet: 1) pretended environmental stewardship is merely a luxury for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it; and 2) insinuated that a lack of such stewardship primarily harms the sensibilities of rich folk, but not much else.

Today, parts of the same city where Lepore delivered his diatribe remain inundated. Same thing for “thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds,” according to the Boulder Daily Camera.

Already, there is at least one confirmed oil pipeline leak. At the same time, the Denver Post reports that “oil drums, tanks and other industrial debris mixed into the swollen (South Platte) river.” Some of this has been caught on camera, as harrowing photos of partially submerged oil and gas sites now hit the Internet. It all suggests that there’s a very real possibility of a slow-motion environmental disaster, one whose potential damage to water supplies, spread of carcinogenic chemicals and contamination of agricultural land should concern both rich and poor.

In retrospect, then, the flood powerfully illustrates the problem with officials like Lepore (who later apologized) pretending that environmental stewardship and the precautionary principle are just aristocratic priorities. They are, in fact, quite the opposite: They are priorities for everyone and if those priorities have any class implications at all, those implications disproportionately involve the middle and lower classes.
~ from Industry Puppets Spew Obscene Lies While People Drown by David Sirota ~

Another odd thing about the situation in Colorado is the overall lack of analysis in the mainstream media of possible causes. I heard many a host and correspondent say words like epic and historic, but I don't think I heard any of them say the most obvious ones: global warming/climate change. When an area that has been dry for hundreds of years experiences torrential rains, one would think that it would be okay to explore the possibility that one of the reasons for this event had to do with climate change.

Too often, unfortunately, the mainstream media treats atypical storms just like they treat mass killings perpetrated by white men -- they utilize the "lone wolf" rationale. In terms of storms, we are told it is a freak occurrence completely unrelated to any number of other so-called freak storms. Though all these huge dots seem to be staring the establishment in the face, they are loathe to connect the dots! It's not that they don't see the obvious connections; it's more that they don't want us to recognize them.

Why? Because, if the majority of people start connecting the dots, we will demand significant changes to business as usual and that might mean a dip in the corporate world's short-term profits. We can't have that now!

Bigger Isn't Always Better

Trey Smith

Meteorologists know Friday's tornado in the El Reno area was an EF5.

And based on records, they believe it is the widest recorded in the United States.

But there's something they don't want to think about.

“The impacts were horrible of what happened, where it hit and what happened to people and structures,” meteorologist Rick Smith said Tuesday. “We are certainly not minimizing that at all, not at all. But had it gone through the very densely populated areas, this would have been ... I don't even want to imagine what it would have been.”

In the rare category of EF5 tornadoes, the one on Friday in the El Reno area was “super rare,” Smith said.

The National Weather Service's Norman Forecast Office, where Smith works, had rated the storm as an EF3 based on structure damage. Meteorologists updated the estimate Tuesday, determining it was an EF5, the strongest classification for a tornado. It was 2.6 miles wide at its widest point and tracked across 16.2 miles. The storm had wind speeds greater than 295 mph. That 2.6-mile tornado path width is believed to be the widest on record in the United States, according to the Weather Service.
~ from El Reno Tornado Is 'Super Rare' National Record-Breaker by Bryan Painter and Silas Allen ~

One of the questions that we may be able to answer within the next two or three years is whether or not the El Reno, OK tornado turns out to be "super rare." While the Moore, OK tornado wasn't quite as fierce as the El Reno one, both were designated EF5s. That is two major twisters in less than 2 weeks in the same general vicinity.

Does this prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is real? Of course not. Our scientific knowledge is not advanced enough to pinpoint the precise causes of these violent storms. It could turn out to be nothing more than random chance. But, if other record-setting tornadoes hit this same area later this year or next, it certainly points TOWARD climate change as a likely explanation.

In fact, the growing intensity of a variety of climatic events -- extreme drought, continuous flooding, brutal blizzards and winter warm ups at unexpected times, ferocious hurricanes and record-setting tornadoes -- points toward something amiss in nature. Again, none of this absolutely guarantees that climate change is THE culprit, but over 90 percent of the world's scientists believe it is!

Maybe it's time that we start listening to them.

3 More

Trey Smith

Of the more than 12,000 posts that have been featured on this blog to date, the three that have been viewed the most often have nothing to do with Taoism. Those three posts concerned the suicide of meteorologist Matt Hughes of the Discovery Channel's documentary-style reality television show, Storm Chasers. Though the show is now off the air, I learned today that two more of the featured storm chasers have died, Tim Samaras and Carl Young. They were killed doing what they loved: chasing tornadoes.

As a weather nerd, I love watching shows of this nature. Since I'm down with a respiratory infection (which explains why there are fewer posts on the blog), I've been watching a lot more TV than usual the last few days and I've been viewing a lot of the coverage of the recent spate of storms pounding Oklahoma, Arkansas and nearby states. Samaras and Young were killed by one the tornadoes that touched down Friday near Oklahoma City.

It just goes to show that, while storm chasing has been glamorized on television, it still is a dangerous pastime. All the competition to get the best videos and data seems to be causing more folks to take more chances. Mike Bettes and his film crew from the Weather Channel were injured by the same tornado that claimed Samaras and Young. While I love the riveting footage these brave folks obtain of storms, it is not worth their lives.

Without Warning

Trey Smith

As the Federal Times recently reported, sequestration includes an 8.2 percent cut to the National Weather Service. According to the organization representing weather service employees, that means there is “no way for the agency to maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices” and also means “people are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings.”

Summarizing the problem, the American Institute of Physics put it bluntly: “The government runs the risk of significantly increasing forecast error, and the government’s ability to warn Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised.”

The good news is that the National Weather Service station in Norman, Okla., had a warning in effect for 16 minutes before the most recent Oklahoma City tornado hit. That’s better than the 13 minute average so, thankfully, more people probably had more time than usual to evacuate or find safe shelter.

But what about the next time around? Will we be as ready as we can and should be? The answer is maybe not.

Though the past few years saw a record number of billion-dollar weather cataclysms, the weather service remains a perennial target for budget cuts and already has nearly a 10 percent employment vacancy rate — and those realities may be damaging its long-term ability to warn the public about severe weather events.
~ from Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now? by David Sirota ~

By now, we all know the mantra of conservatives: Shrink government. Government, they say, is the problem. So, we need to cut it to the bone.

But this government they desperately want to eviscerate is responsible for a host of things that helps to keep average Americans safe and healthy. If we do away with workplace safety inspectors, then workplaces become unsafe. If we do away with food inspectors and/or food safety regulations, then our food supply becomes unsafe. If we do away with safeguards to protect the air, water and land, they will become unsafe too. And, as David Sirota points out, if we cut back on funds available to the National Weather Service, we may not be adequately warned the next time a climate catastrophe is upon us.

In the aftermath of the recent tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, the President pledged whatever federal support the State of Oklahoma needed. Interestingly enough, the state's Republican Governor -- a member of one of the political parties that wants to shrink government -- Mary Fallin graciously accepted. The irony here is palpable! When tragedy strikes, those who want to shrink government almost never turn away federal government assistance. In fact, they sometimes complain of not receiving all they desire.

It's almost like they are saying, "Shrink government, but not when you're dealing me!"

When A Basement Is Not Abasement

Trey Smith

I grew up in the generalized area known as Tornado Alley. Every Spring and Summer the sirens would go off and we would grab the transistor radio and head to the basement. While a basement won't guarantee 100% that a person will escape the wrath of a tornado, your chances of survival are much greater. In all the years I lived in Tornado land, I can only think of two houses I lived in that did not have a basement and I didn't live in either for very long.

It is a known fact that riding out a tornado below the ground floor -- even a direct hit -- saves a tremendous amount of lives. And yet, few communities in Tornado Alley require basements for newly built homes and public buildings. One of the two schools in Moore, Oklahoma -- Plaza Towers Elementary School -- that suffered a direct hit by a tornado on Monday did not have a basement and several children were killed. Many of the survivors interviewed survived because they lived in homes that had basements (or storm cellars) and they were able to get down in them before the twister hit and destroyed their homes.

Since we know that basements save lives in tornadoes, why aren't they mandated in all new construction? The answer is as old as they hills: It costs more. Builders don't want the added costs and neither do many homeowners. So, homes are built on slabs in Tornado Alley and the people who live in them often die needlessly when a tornado descends on their neighborhood.

Coming Next Week

Trey Smith

I'll be the first to admit that I can be very obsessed with the weather. For this reason, I like to watch the Weather Channel. For the most part, I like their programming and special features. That said, I am little uncomfortable with the recent promos advertising that, beginning next week, it will be Tornado Week.

I understand that, in this world of a gazillion cable channels, you need a lot of glitz and excitement to try to get viewers to tune in. You can't simply say, "Next week we will take a look at a variety of aspects about tornadoes. So please watch." Your promos need to be creative and make use of emotive hooks. I get that.

But sometimes I worry that promos about climactic events and natural disasters are portrayed too antiseptically. Tornadoes, for example, lead to numerous deaths, injuries, emotional trauma and widespread property damage. Yes, they may be cool to look at -- personally, severe weather fascinates the heck out of me -- but I bet that the people who live through the storms featured don't think of them as cool at all!

What would people think if, instead of Tornado Week, some cable outlet featured People Blown Apart By Bombs Week or Industrial Disaster Week? We would watch our intrepid reporters oohing and aahing as a bomb explodes in a crowd or a fertilizer plant becomes a fireball. We would get to watch as the reporters scramble over each other trying to capture the best shot of the calamity and then breathlessly explain the wheres, whys and hows of the holocaust just viewed.

Me thinks most rational people would think that such a "week" was in very bad taste, to put it mildly. So, why is it okay to treat tornadoes this way?

For Every Disaster, There's a Golden Lining

Trey Smith

An incisive analysis by sociologists Kevin Fox Gotham and Miriam Greenberg of what happened after the 9/11 attacks in New York and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina offers some concrete forebodings. Everyone knows that, as soon as Katrina made landfall, the racial divisions of New Orleans became the scandal of the month when it came to which communities were drowned and which got helped, who got arrested (and shot), and who left town forever. To be poor in New Orleans during and after Katrina was a curse. To be poor and black amounted to excommunication.

Gotham and Greenberg prove that, post-9/11 and post-Katrina, reconstruction and rehabilitation was also skewed heavily in favor of the business community and the wealthier. In both cities, big business controlled the redevelopment process—and so where the money landed and where it didn't.

Tax breaks and private sector subsidies became channels for federal aid. 'Public benefit' standards, which once accompanied federal grants and tax exemptions to insure that projects served some public purpose, especially to 'benefit persons of low and moderate income,' were eliminated, leaving poorer people out in the cold, while exacerbating existing inequalities. Governments scurried around inventing ways to auction off reconstruction projects to private interests by issuing tax exempt 'Private Activity Bonds.' These were soon gloriously renamed 'Liberty Bonds,' though the unasked question was: Whose liberty?
~ from A History of Disaster Capitalism by Steve Fraser ~

The way our economic system works is that, regardless of the situation, there always will be winners and losers. This is as true when things are going great as when things are going badly. While most of us common folk dread war and natural disasters, there is a small segment of the population that is chomping at the bit for the next war or natural disaster to hit. In fact, chomping at the bit is an understatement -- it suggests passive waiting. As is often the case, this small segment of the population actively tries to precipitate wars and natural disasters.

Why do you think America can't break its war addiction? While war means death, injury, dislocation and destruction to the majority, the small minority profits handsomely. Perpetual war, in conjunction with the national security state, keeps the spigot of taxpayer dollars flowing to the few and, with so much easy money to be made, this minority is loath to have the spigot turned off.

When your economic system is built on the premise of profits before people, "natural" disasters become the minority's best friend. Because these disasters are like a fatted calf, you will go out of your way to do all that you can to set the stage for them to occur. And, when they inevitably DO occur, you will swoop in to steal as much public money as your well-placed government servants will allow.

Both Sides Now

Trey Smith

The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.

The annual spring outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted hotter, drier conditions across much of the US, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where farmers have been fighting to hang on to crops of winter wheat.

The three-month forecast noted an additional hazard, however, for the midwest: with heavy, late snows setting up conditions for flooding along the Red and Souris rivers in North Dakota.

"It's a mixed bag of flooding, drought and warm weather," Laura Furgione, the deputy director of NOAA's weather service told a conference call with reporters.

Last year produced the hottest year since record keeping began more than a century ago, with several weeks in a row of 100+degree days. It also brought drought to close to 65% of the country by summer's end.
~ from Drought That Ravaged US Crops Likely to Worsen in 2013, Forecast Warns by Suzanne Goldenberg ~

Isn't that just peachy? Drought AND floods. Maybe locusts will be next!

I am continually amazed that some folks refuse to entertain the notion that global warming/climate change might be the cause of this continued misery. As I have asked before, how bad does it have to get before these people finally say, "OK, maybe the scientists have a point."

Do cows have to start exploding in fields? Do Kansas and Oklahoma have to look like the Mohave Desert? Really, what will it take?

The Real Sticking Point

Trey Smith

I felt genuine satisfaction at having been there, but given what was at stake, given Frankenstorm Sandy, the devastating Midwestern drought and record southwestern fires of 2012, the Snowmageddon winter storm that had recently dropped 40 inches of the white stuff on Hamden, Connecticut, the blistering spring and summer of 2012, the fast-melting Arctic sea ice, and the fact that last year broke all heat records for the continental United States, given the build-up of billion-dollar weather disasters in recent years, and the growing emphasis on “extreme weather” events on the national TV news, shouldn’t hundreds of thousands have been there? After all, I’ve been in antiwar demonstrations in which at least that many marched and in 1982, I found myself in my hometown in a crowd of a million demonstrating against the possibility of a world-ending nuclear war. Is climate change a less important issue?
~ from Where Is Everybody? Why It's So Tough to Get Your Head Around Climate Change by Tom Engelhardt ~

What is Engelhardt referring to? The Forward On Climate Rally on Sunday, February 17. You may have seen it mentioned on your local TV news...or maybe not.

I believe one of the primary reasons that it is so tough for people to get their heads around climate change is that it calls for change on an individual basis. When people take to the streets to demand an end to war or nuclear proliferation, they are trying to apply pressure to political leaders to do something that is beyond the scope of individual citizens.

Climate change is different. You and I -- without any government involvement whatsoever -- can be the catalysts for change. If consumers stopped purchasing GMO frankenfoods, stopped purchasing gas-guzzling vehicles and drove less, stopped spraying carcinogenic muck on our lawns and gardens, and recycled like there is no tomorrow, change would occur. As the corporate behemoths began to see their profits going down, they would change the way they did business to push their market shares in the opposite directions. As political candidates began to see their vote totals slip away, out of their own self-interest, they would jump on the environmental bandwagon.

But in order to serve as the catalysts for this type of change, Americans have to get our fat butts off of the couch! We have to quit stuffing ready-made garbage down our pie holes. We have to change the way WE live. And that's the real sticking point, isn't it?

The Shock[less] Doctrine

Trey Smith

Less than three days after Sandy made landfall on the East Coast of the United States, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute blamed New Yorkers’ resistance to big-box stores for the misery they were about to endure. Writing on Forbes.com, he explained that the city’s refusal to embrace Walmart will likely make the recovery much harder: “Mom-and-pop stores simply can’t do what big stores can in these circumstances,” he wrote.

And the preemptive scapegoating didn’t stop there. He also warned that if the pace of reconstruction turned out to be sluggish (as it so often is) then “pro-union rules such as the Davis-Bacon Act” would be to blame, a reference to the statute that requires workers on public-works projects to be paid not the minimum wage, but the prevailing wage in the region.

The same day, Frank Rapoport, a lawyer representing several billion-dollar construction and real estate contractors, jumped in to suggest that many of those public works projects shouldn’t be public at all. Instead, cash-strapped governments should turn to “public private partnerships,” known as “P3s.” That means roads, bridges and tunnels being rebuilt by private companies, which, for instance, could install tolls and keep the profits.

Up until now, the only thing stopping them has been the law — specifically the absence of laws in New York State and New Jersey that enable these sorts of deals. But Rapoport is convinced that the combination of broke governments and needy people will provide just the catalyst needed to break the deadlock. “There were some bridges that were washed out in New Jersey that need structural replacement, and it’s going to be very expensive,” he told The Nation. “And so the government may well not have the money to build it the right way. And that’s when you turn to a P3.”

Ray Lehmann, co-founder of the R Street Institute, a mouthpiece for the insurance lobby (formerly a division of the climate-denying Heartland Institute), had another public prize in his sights. In a Wall Street Journal article about Sandy, he was quoted arguing for the eventual “full privatization” of the National Flood Insurance Program, the federal initiative that provides affordable protection from some natural disasters — and which private insurers see as unfair competition.

But the prize for shameless disaster capitalism surely goes to right-wing economist Russell S. Sobel, writing in a New York Times online forum. Sobel suggested that, in hard-hit areas, FEMA should create “free trade zones — in which all normal regulations, licensing and taxes [are] suspended.” This corporate free-for-all would, apparently, “better provide the goods and services victims need.”

Yes that’s right: this catastrophe very likely created by climate change — a crisis born of the colossal regulatory failure to prevent corporations from treating the atmosphere as their open sewer — is just one more opportunity for more deregulation. And the fact that this storm has demonstrated that poor and working-class people are far more vulnerable to the climate crisis shows that this is clearly the right moment to strip those people of what few labor protections they have left, as well as to privatize the meager public services available to them. Most of all, when faced with an extraordinarily costly crisis born of corporate greed, hand out tax holidays to corporations.

Is there anyone who can still feign surprise at this stuff? The flurry of attempts to use Sandy’s destructive power as a cash grab is just the latest chapter in the very long story I have called The Shock Doctrine. And it is but the tiniest glimpse into the ways large corporations are seeking to reap enormous profits from climate chaos.
~ from Superstorm Sandy — a People's Shock? by Naomi Klein ~

You see? Climate change is just another strategy to wrest control away from the democratic process in order to generate astronomical profit! It is just such a despicable strategy to put the generation of wealth for the few AHEAD of the health and wellbeing of the majority.

Even worse, this is a natural outgrowth of the capitalist system. When profit is anointed king, everything else -- including people -- takes a backseat. It is an amoral system that begets immoral outcomes.

Too Often, It's Worse Than We Think It Will Be

Trey Smith

As I write this, it’s been nearly a week since Hurricane Sandy roared ashore on the East Coast of the U.S., leaving devastation in its wake. On day six after the storm, there are many communities still waiting to get their electricity restored.

If there’s one overarching lesson to be learned from Hurricane Sandy, it’s that the old standard, still publicized by emergency planning agencies all over this country — that people need to prepare for a disaster by stocking up on three days’ worth of emergency supplies — is woefully inadequate.

On day six, many residents of Long Island, the New Jersey shore, and outlying communities still have no electricity, which means they have no heat in November, no clean water flowing from their taps, no hot water to sterilize or clean anything, and no electricity to cook food. Which means they’re still eating food out of cans, nearly a week after the storm, if they have that much canned food left. No electricity means no ability for gas stations to pump gas, which means people can’t get in their cars and drive to buy more supplies. If they followed the advice of their local emergency planning agency, then they ran out of food three days ago.

And now comes the announcement that many of these communities won’t get their power restored until two weeks after the storm, leaving these people stranded and living in pre-civilization conditions for an inhuman amount of time.
~ from Lessons from Hurricane Sandy by Maria Tomchick ~

You'd think we'd learn this lesson after a while! It is the same advice given before Hurricane Katrina. It wasn't an adequate warning then either. When it comes to inclement weather -- hurricanes to tsunamis to tornadoes or earthquakes to floods to blizzards -- in today's altered climate three days ain't nothing.

So much of our lives in the modern western world are made possible by electricity, running water, functioning sewers and cell phones that, when a severe storm strikes and these systems are knocked off-line, a lot of us behave like lost children. We don't know what to do with ourselves.

Modern warfare targets these very same systems. If you can severely damage your opponent's infrastructure, you immediately zap the morale of the people. Everyday living becomes brutish and people struggle to stay healthy and safe.

In the future -- as storms grow worse and worse -- we need a new directive. Instead of preparing ourselves to be without necessary services for a mere three days, we should expect to have the ability to "go it alone" for a MINIMUM of one week. If you happen to live in a rural and/or more impoverished area, then you should double that to a MINIMUM of two weeks.

How Things Are

Trey Smith

Staten Island is barely a dozen miles from lower Manhattan but a world away in terms of the attention it has received since superstorm Sandy hit on Monday night. Across the island, there is a pervading sense of injustice among residents, that their plight has been ignored by a city leadership and a media convulsed by the blackouts and flooded subway tunnels of lower Manhattan.

"Only Manhattan, because of rich people," says Teresa Bar, who lives in South Beach. "They only think of Manhattan, Manhattan, Manhattan."

The home Bar shares with her husband Jerzy has been severely damaged by hurricane Sandy. The storm surge ripped open both their front and garage doors, filling the ground floor with five feet of water.

The couple had evacuated when Sandy hit, but Bar is angered by what she sees as a lack of response from New York City authorities.

"Manhattan and Long Island, all the time, but we don't have any information about Staten Island at all. We pay taxes, everything, but we are the smaller people. We're not important to our government or anything."
~ from Staten Island Feels Forgotten After Being Hit Hard by Sandy by Adam Gabbatt ~

Haiti -- a very impoverished nation -- still is reeling from the earthquake that struck it in 2010. While the more well-to-do sections of New Orleans have rebounded nicely since Hurricane Katrina, the same cannot be said for the poorer sections of town. Many of those neighborhoods have not been rebuilt.

While many like to believe that all residents are treated equally after a natural or human-caused disaster, history doesn't bear this out at all. The wealthy and big business tend to get aid first, while the poor must wait around in the hopes that there is aid left to assist them.

One reason for this is that individuals, families and businesses in the higher income brackets usually are covered by private insurance and far more poor people are not. It's not that poor people don't give a wit about insurance; it's more that they can't afford it!

Another reason is that businesses, in particular, employ people and the longer businesses sit idle, the longer people are out of work. And then there is a prime reason that the rich don't like to talk about. Simply put, they have much more political clout! Anger a wealthy family and they might not contribute as much or anything to the mayor's, governor's and president's campaign war chest.

It's just how things are.

At Her Mercy

Trey Smith

We split atoms. We map the heavens. We build skyscrapers that jut into the sky. We manufacture contraptions that fly far higher than any bird. We channel and harness rivers.

Our continuing technological advances have propelled human society forward. In the western world, life expectancy is ever inching upwards. Yes, we have become masters of this realm.

And yet, for all of our immense knowledge and capabilities, not unlike ancient humankind, we remain at the mercy of Mother Nature. When cataclysmic storms rain down from the heavens, we are reminded just how powerless we truly are. Each hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, flood, tornado, blizzard and ice storm shows us that, in the overall scheme of things, we're little toddlers compared to the forces of nature.

Compared to previous generations about our ONLY advantage is that we've become a tad bit better at predicting climatic events which helps us to better prepare to withstand them. Over the past few days, millions watched as Super storm Sandy marched toward the eastern seaboard of the US. By and large, the predictions of forecasters were on target. The storm made landfall about where they thought it would and the damage wrought was in the ballpark of what they anticipated.

But not all predictions pan out this well. In September, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center forecast that my corner of the world in southwest Washington was in an area of likely drought development. According to those forecasts, it was supposed to be an exceptionally dry October. This forecast was way, way off.

As it now stands, October will be the third wettest month of this calendar year with rainfall 2.2 times of normal (15+ inches as I type this). It is very difficult to have a drought when there are deep puddles of standing water all around!

I will be very interested to see if the October 18 prediction for November holds true. As you can see below, we again are supposed to be in an area that is abnormally dry for this time of year. Right now, it's hard for me to imagine that this forecast will stand as we have one storm after another lined up over the Pacific Ocean taking aim directly at us.

Whether or not it rains like crazy or the tap is cut off, we can't do a thing to influence the outcome. Mother Nature will do what she will and we must deal with the results. You see, Mother Nature is driving the car; we're mere passengers along for the ride! 

(So, buckle up.)

Real Life Tao - The Tempests of Life

Trey Smith

One hundred years ago Hurricane Sandy would have caught those along the Atlantic seaboard off-guard. Yes, some might have had an inkling of the storm's mammoth size and ferocity, but chances are great that most people would have been caught ill-prepared and the loss of life would have been significant.

With our advances in science, the world has been able to watch as Sandy has plotted its course toward the mid-Atlantic states. We now fly planes into hurricanes to record the pressure and wind speeds. We employ a variety of computer models that predict the path of such storms. Both government and the media have focused on the coming tempest in such a way to warn people of the impending dangers.

We are now able to track storms of this nature because of our ever-broadening viewpoint. Satellites and other technological advances allow us to pull away from the earth to see the "big picture." It is because our vision is not as myopic as before that we can prepare and gird ourselves for the coming fury that will envelope us.

There is a lesson here. In our own lives, we often are too close to the matter of our deepest affections -- ourselves! Like Zhuangzi's well-frog (from Chapter 17 or this post by Scott), we imprison ourselves in our own little worlds. We don't allow ourselves to see beyond the confines of the well.

Because our vision is so focused on that which is close up, we often don't notice the tempests swirling around us. When they methodically slam into us, we are caught completely off-guard and we flail about as we try to find higher ground.

If only we would learn to take a broader view of life -- to see beyond the constrictions of ego -- we could see the tempests of life approaching and take the necessary actions to calm the clouds before they can blow up into storms.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

When It Rains, It Pours

Trey Smith

So much for the drought! After experiencing a very uncharacteristic late summer - early autumn dry spell which saw no measurable rainfall for 31 days, we're making up for it today (nearly 2.00" thus far).

It just goes to show that Mother Nature has her way of evening things out. Our climate on the southwest Washington coast is predicated on rain and, even during an extended lack thereof, we tend to be able to catch up in a hurry.

Not only have we experienced buckets of rain today, but we're set to receive buckets more over the next three days. After that, forecasters have indicated it may turn dry again. (I hope it is relatively dry from Thursday - Saturday as my dad and step-mother will be here for a visit!)