This was a tough one — and so necessary. Thank you for everything you do and for modeling what it means to be a good global (and local) citizen in these times.
I agree with most of your material. The science is right. The longer a natural gas pipeline/supply chain, the more potential for leaks. The best way to handle that is stop building them. Yet people can own gas and sell it. They cannot say the same about the sun and wind.
My problem with environmental perspectives is quite simple, and it is a problem that I find in myself. The best personal response to climate change is to use less energy. Drive less, keep winters colder and summers warmer on the thermostat, don't buy CAFO meat, cut back on high carbon foods that damage the environment like palm oil and coffee, fly less (or not at all), walk or ride a bike, pay attention to the embodied carbon of the stuff you buy, and buy less of it. All these are simple, but hard to do and I will admit my own complicity. "For that which I should not do, I do; and the things I should do, I do not do." A paraphrase of Romans 7:15. We are caught in a system that we wish would end, but we don't know how because it is the only way we have lived. Our indigenous brethren, locally and globally can help us learn otherwise if we are willing to listen.
Thank you for this newsletter. In the 1970s when we read the Club of Rome report in paperback form I never thought climate change would come in my life time. Here we are....from the Kogelberg Biosphere reserve in the Southern Cape in South Africa. Sorry I can't pay, but greatly appreciate your newsletters.
Hi Bill, and hello everyone. The flooding in Asheville was not caused by the extra water, nor by the damage done to the forests by acid rain. The floods were caused by the fact that America has clearcut 97% of its forests since the 1600s. Much has been lost to roads, cities and agriculture, and people understand how that causes flooding, especially when people build on floodplains. What y'all don't realise, is that clearcutting all those private, National and State Forests has removed 90% of the biomass from each and every acre cut, forever. Only 10% of the average annual biomass grows back in a plantation. Clearcutting has cost the USA 800 cubic kilometres of living biomass, a huge sponge that used to absorb this kind of water easily. Have a look at this video, and you'll see what I mean. Luckily, this problem is also an easy solution- banning clearcutting, switching to Eco Forestry, and growing all our forests back to maturity. The US would absorb billions of tonnes of C02 more each year if they did, too. Just as many jobs. Cheers all. https://sevengenerationsforestry.ca/eco-forestry/long-forestry-video
Sometimes there are multiple causes for things. It's assumed to be certain that climate change is the only cause of intense storms. Not saying it's not a factor, perhaps significant, perhaps not, depending, but these are complex systems.
What we do know is that no one from the top levels at the "Biden" / Harris administration cares about the people suffering from the hurricane devastation. They talk about "being briefed", "talking", "monitoring", but they are not there.
Hi Ellen, I agree about multiple causes. In trying to keep my post short, I didn't mean to say acid rain or increased moisture content played no part, just not a "tipping point" part. Clearcutting, by reducing site biomass permanently by 90%, and because it covers so much ground, overwhelms the other causes. Clearcutting is the primary cause of biodiversity loss, extreme flooding and fires in North America, by a long, long way. It is also the #2 cause of global warming. #1 if you assign C02 from extreme fires. It is also the easiest solution we have to all the above problems. The logging industry loves to deflect the blame, by saying "atmospheric rivers caused floods" etc. But clearcutting is the primary cause. Did you watch the video? As for any politician, all they care about is getting elected. cheers
Thank you, Bill, anyone with two working brain cells should be able to see for themselves the climate is worse than it was a mere ten years ago and is getting worse every year.
Of course trump and the wealthy oil magnates don't care, why should they? They'll be long dead before the unlivable climate for humans arrive, even if it only takes ten years - and they don't give two hoots in hell about their offspring either.
Is anyone concerned about the lack of response from "Biden"/ Harris, while billions are given to Ukraine / military industrial complex, and people here are dying, drowning, and Kamala Harris does a photo op looking tired in front of blank pieces of paper on a private plane?
Seriously, and with respect to all, and with respect to this beautiful earth, *How can this be OK* (especially while billions of dollars are going to the military industrial complex)?
"The Dossier has found that not a single Biden-Harris Administration Cabinet official is on the ground in disaster areas, and none have expressed an intention to visit the sites most impacted by the hurricane.
President Biden spent Friday to Sunday at the beach in Delaware, according to his public schedule. On Monday, he was at the White House to celebrate the U.S. Olympic team.
When asked what he’s doing to help with the Helene response, Biden said he “was on the phone for two hours yesterday” while he was in reality just sitting on the beach in Delaware.
Vice President Kamala Harris spent the weekend campaigning and raising money on the West Coast, hosting high-dollar fundraisers and rallies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.
After some blowback, her team then released a Veep-like PR photo Monday on X, showcasing Harris on her plane (with unplugged headphones and blank pieces of paper in front of her), cosplaying a leader who is managing the Helene response.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, despite being the senior infrastructure guy in the Cabinet, is once more nowhere to be found. His public schedule has not been updated since mid-August. Instead of focusing on assisting Helene victims, he is reportedly helping Tim Walz with debate prep for the upcoming vice presidential debate on Tuesday evening. Instead of assisting with disaster relief, “Mayor Pete” is in Minnesota with Tim Walz.
DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas, who presides over FEMA, is also nowhere to be found. When Helene reached American territory, he was in California, hosting an awards ceremony for the U.S. Secret Service.
Instead of assisting with disaster relief efforts, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland was in Washington, D.C., Monday to celebrate the Olympic teams at the White House.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is in Italy meeting with the G7 nations, discussing how to impose stringent climate change policies upon humanity.
The EPA Administrator spent last week in New York City at an event called Climate Week NYC.
The U.S. Small Business Administrator spent the weekend in Nebraska celebrating Native American tribes.
The FEMA director is the only mildly senior-level Biden-Harris official on the ground in the disaster areas. However, she is largely doing photo ops with state governors and checking boxes.
This is the reality of an administration entirely controlled by the D.C. bureaucracy. With major swaths of the country in desperate need of federal resources, there is nobody to be held accountable for deploying assets to areas of need. The cognitively-impaired president is at the beach. The vice president couldn’t care less. And the rest of their cabinet is busy fulfilling other “duties.”"
Bill if you're in Montana stumping for Testor, you're experiencing the same abnormally warm weather I have been experiencing in Gallatin and Madison counties. We had a break last night when a clipper cold front sailed through, but in another day we'll be back to this preposterously high temperatures again. We're just lucky there hasn't been any lightning recently. The forests are tinder boxes. All good arguments for global rapid heating as we speak.
If things keep getting worse on the weather front, how much longer will it be before environmentalists support taxing net CO2 emissions? We can't expect politicians to get out ahead of public sentiment so environmentalists need to start working on the public sentiment. If they had made this Job 1 since Earth Day 1, we would not be in this fix.
I suggest that we create a meme THIS IS WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE LOOKS LIKE and attach it to every story about destructive extreme weather, in every medium, whenever we can.
My grandparents built a house in Saluda, NC, in 1928, about 45 minutes from Asheville. Fortunately, the house survived the deluge, with a little bit of flooding downstairs. But the area is devastated. We were planning to take my 96 year old dad "home" this past weekend to his parents' house, and now we can't, because all roads are closed: two interstates and the state highways as well. My cousin was at the house when the storm happened: there is no power or cell service, and she can't leave, again because the roads are closed. My dad grew up also in Morganton, NC, which is under water. I didn't show him those pictures.
My grandparents would have been deeply shocked by this catastrophe: in their time, Western North Carolina was one of the most pleasant places in the country to live, with four mild seasons, temperatures rarely climbing into the 80s in summer, and so few insects that the house had no screens on the windows. But we had to install AC two years ago because the upstairs had become unbearably hot in summer. And now, I think people will think twice before moving to this "climate haven."
I hope I will be able to go there in November and check on the house and our favorite places, but I'm guessing that one of those places, Pisgah National Forest, with its beautiful waterfalls and trout streams, will remain damaged for a long time. So many uprooted trees must have come down that river. Likewise the Green River, which flooded badly only a few years ago, killing some people who lived along its banks.
Meanwhile, back in TN where I live, there was almost no rain from June to mid-September. Normally there are about four inches of rain a month, or about an inch a week, evenly distributed over the month. But instead, we had 12" of rain in May, followed by very little in June, July and August. The first real rain we've had is the remnants of Helene, and it was much needed. But it would have been nice to get it a little at a time, as we used to. I used drip hoses to keep my garden alive. It worked, but my water bill was about four times the normal amount. Somebody is making money off fossil fuels, but climate change will end up costing everybody a lot.
"Show me da money" is a terrific movie line. But neither was is nor can be the raisson d'etre of America. Does our Constitution say "All men have an equal right to consume and combust anything and everything they desire for not a penny more than necessary regardless of harm to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to anyone, anywhere"? Uh, no.
Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the great cabinet they can assrmble (Buttigeg, Booker, Cooper, Moore, Shapiro, Kelly...and the like) WILL right the ship. Michael Mann, Bill McKibben, Liz Kolbert, Naomie Oreskes have pounded the oil plutocracy drum for decades. Let's give them huge win! Thank you, Bill.
“Project Cirrus was the first Official attempt to modify a hurricane. It was run by General Electric with the support of the US military. The official theory was that by changing the temperature outside the eye-wall of a hurricane, which they did by seeding the clouds with various compounds such as silver iodide, a decrease in strong winds will result.
“On October 13, 1947, Project Cirrus targeted a hurricane heading out to sea. Approximately 180 pounds of dry ice was dropped into the clouds. The crew then reported a "pronounced modification of the cloud deck". And the hurricane abruptly changed direction and made landfall near Savannah, Georgia. The public blamed the government.
“Irving Langmuir, who pioneered General Electric’s atmospheric research department, and admired that the project was about learning how to weaponize the weather, also claimed the reversal of the hurricane had been caused by the project, but the government denied it for twelve years.
This was a tough one — and so necessary. Thank you for everything you do and for modeling what it means to be a good global (and local) citizen in these times.
I agree with most of your material. The science is right. The longer a natural gas pipeline/supply chain, the more potential for leaks. The best way to handle that is stop building them. Yet people can own gas and sell it. They cannot say the same about the sun and wind.
My problem with environmental perspectives is quite simple, and it is a problem that I find in myself. The best personal response to climate change is to use less energy. Drive less, keep winters colder and summers warmer on the thermostat, don't buy CAFO meat, cut back on high carbon foods that damage the environment like palm oil and coffee, fly less (or not at all), walk or ride a bike, pay attention to the embodied carbon of the stuff you buy, and buy less of it. All these are simple, but hard to do and I will admit my own complicity. "For that which I should not do, I do; and the things I should do, I do not do." A paraphrase of Romans 7:15. We are caught in a system that we wish would end, but we don't know how because it is the only way we have lived. Our indigenous brethren, locally and globally can help us learn otherwise if we are willing to listen.
Thank you for this newsletter. In the 1970s when we read the Club of Rome report in paperback form I never thought climate change would come in my life time. Here we are....from the Kogelberg Biosphere reserve in the Southern Cape in South Africa. Sorry I can't pay, but greatly appreciate your newsletters.
Hi Bill, and hello everyone. The flooding in Asheville was not caused by the extra water, nor by the damage done to the forests by acid rain. The floods were caused by the fact that America has clearcut 97% of its forests since the 1600s. Much has been lost to roads, cities and agriculture, and people understand how that causes flooding, especially when people build on floodplains. What y'all don't realise, is that clearcutting all those private, National and State Forests has removed 90% of the biomass from each and every acre cut, forever. Only 10% of the average annual biomass grows back in a plantation. Clearcutting has cost the USA 800 cubic kilometres of living biomass, a huge sponge that used to absorb this kind of water easily. Have a look at this video, and you'll see what I mean. Luckily, this problem is also an easy solution- banning clearcutting, switching to Eco Forestry, and growing all our forests back to maturity. The US would absorb billions of tonnes of C02 more each year if they did, too. Just as many jobs. Cheers all. https://sevengenerationsforestry.ca/eco-forestry/long-forestry-video
Sometimes there are multiple causes for things. It's assumed to be certain that climate change is the only cause of intense storms. Not saying it's not a factor, perhaps significant, perhaps not, depending, but these are complex systems.
What we do know is that no one from the top levels at the "Biden" / Harris administration cares about the people suffering from the hurricane devastation. They talk about "being briefed", "talking", "monitoring", but they are not there.
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-entire-biden-harris-cabinet-is
Hi Ellen, I agree about multiple causes. In trying to keep my post short, I didn't mean to say acid rain or increased moisture content played no part, just not a "tipping point" part. Clearcutting, by reducing site biomass permanently by 90%, and because it covers so much ground, overwhelms the other causes. Clearcutting is the primary cause of biodiversity loss, extreme flooding and fires in North America, by a long, long way. It is also the #2 cause of global warming. #1 if you assign C02 from extreme fires. It is also the easiest solution we have to all the above problems. The logging industry loves to deflect the blame, by saying "atmospheric rivers caused floods" etc. But clearcutting is the primary cause. Did you watch the video? As for any politician, all they care about is getting elected. cheers
Thank you, Bill, anyone with two working brain cells should be able to see for themselves the climate is worse than it was a mere ten years ago and is getting worse every year.
Of course trump and the wealthy oil magnates don't care, why should they? They'll be long dead before the unlivable climate for humans arrive, even if it only takes ten years - and they don't give two hoots in hell about their offspring either.
Is anyone concerned about the lack of response from "Biden"/ Harris, while billions are given to Ukraine / military industrial complex, and people here are dying, drowning, and Kamala Harris does a photo op looking tired in front of blank pieces of paper on a private plane?
Seriously, and with respect to all, and with respect to this beautiful earth, *How can this be OK* (especially while billions of dollars are going to the military industrial complex)?
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-entire-biden-harris-cabinet-is
"The Dossier has found that not a single Biden-Harris Administration Cabinet official is on the ground in disaster areas, and none have expressed an intention to visit the sites most impacted by the hurricane.
President Biden spent Friday to Sunday at the beach in Delaware, according to his public schedule. On Monday, he was at the White House to celebrate the U.S. Olympic team.
When asked what he’s doing to help with the Helene response, Biden said he “was on the phone for two hours yesterday” while he was in reality just sitting on the beach in Delaware.
Vice President Kamala Harris spent the weekend campaigning and raising money on the West Coast, hosting high-dollar fundraisers and rallies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.
After some blowback, her team then released a Veep-like PR photo Monday on X, showcasing Harris on her plane (with unplugged headphones and blank pieces of paper in front of her), cosplaying a leader who is managing the Helene response.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, despite being the senior infrastructure guy in the Cabinet, is once more nowhere to be found. His public schedule has not been updated since mid-August. Instead of focusing on assisting Helene victims, he is reportedly helping Tim Walz with debate prep for the upcoming vice presidential debate on Tuesday evening. Instead of assisting with disaster relief, “Mayor Pete” is in Minnesota with Tim Walz.
DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas, who presides over FEMA, is also nowhere to be found. When Helene reached American territory, he was in California, hosting an awards ceremony for the U.S. Secret Service.
Instead of assisting with disaster relief efforts, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland was in Washington, D.C., Monday to celebrate the Olympic teams at the White House.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is in Italy meeting with the G7 nations, discussing how to impose stringent climate change policies upon humanity.
The EPA Administrator spent last week in New York City at an event called Climate Week NYC.
The U.S. Small Business Administrator spent the weekend in Nebraska celebrating Native American tribes.
The FEMA director is the only mildly senior-level Biden-Harris official on the ground in the disaster areas. However, she is largely doing photo ops with state governors and checking boxes.
This is the reality of an administration entirely controlled by the D.C. bureaucracy. With major swaths of the country in desperate need of federal resources, there is nobody to be held accountable for deploying assets to areas of need. The cognitively-impaired president is at the beach. The vice president couldn’t care less. And the rest of their cabinet is busy fulfilling other “duties.”"
Bill if you're in Montana stumping for Testor, you're experiencing the same abnormally warm weather I have been experiencing in Gallatin and Madison counties. We had a break last night when a clipper cold front sailed through, but in another day we'll be back to this preposterously high temperatures again. We're just lucky there hasn't been any lightning recently. The forests are tinder boxes. All good arguments for global rapid heating as we speak.
If things keep getting worse on the weather front, how much longer will it be before environmentalists support taxing net CO2 emissions? We can't expect politicians to get out ahead of public sentiment so environmentalists need to start working on the public sentiment. If they had made this Job 1 since Earth Day 1, we would not be in this fix.
Such crucial information, and we are indebted to Bill McKibben for continually bringing it to us. Thank you, sir!
Check out John Michael Greer’s 2016 book Dark Age America subtitled Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead.
I suggest that we create a meme THIS IS WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE LOOKS LIKE and attach it to every story about destructive extreme weather, in every medium, whenever we can.
My grandparents built a house in Saluda, NC, in 1928, about 45 minutes from Asheville. Fortunately, the house survived the deluge, with a little bit of flooding downstairs. But the area is devastated. We were planning to take my 96 year old dad "home" this past weekend to his parents' house, and now we can't, because all roads are closed: two interstates and the state highways as well. My cousin was at the house when the storm happened: there is no power or cell service, and she can't leave, again because the roads are closed. My dad grew up also in Morganton, NC, which is under water. I didn't show him those pictures.
My grandparents would have been deeply shocked by this catastrophe: in their time, Western North Carolina was one of the most pleasant places in the country to live, with four mild seasons, temperatures rarely climbing into the 80s in summer, and so few insects that the house had no screens on the windows. But we had to install AC two years ago because the upstairs had become unbearably hot in summer. And now, I think people will think twice before moving to this "climate haven."
I hope I will be able to go there in November and check on the house and our favorite places, but I'm guessing that one of those places, Pisgah National Forest, with its beautiful waterfalls and trout streams, will remain damaged for a long time. So many uprooted trees must have come down that river. Likewise the Green River, which flooded badly only a few years ago, killing some people who lived along its banks.
Meanwhile, back in TN where I live, there was almost no rain from June to mid-September. Normally there are about four inches of rain a month, or about an inch a week, evenly distributed over the month. But instead, we had 12" of rain in May, followed by very little in June, July and August. The first real rain we've had is the remnants of Helene, and it was much needed. But it would have been nice to get it a little at a time, as we used to. I used drip hoses to keep my garden alive. It worked, but my water bill was about four times the normal amount. Somebody is making money off fossil fuels, but climate change will end up costing everybody a lot.
So terribly sad - and two more storms already building up. What does it take for people to act?
California gives Big Oil $8 billion a year in tax breaks, subsidies, grants and other forms of financial assistance. $ 8 billion a year.
"Show me da money" is a terrific movie line. But neither was is nor can be the raisson d'etre of America. Does our Constitution say "All men have an equal right to consume and combust anything and everything they desire for not a penny more than necessary regardless of harm to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to anyone, anywhere"? Uh, no.
Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the great cabinet they can assrmble (Buttigeg, Booker, Cooper, Moore, Shapiro, Kelly...and the like) WILL right the ship. Michael Mann, Bill McKibben, Liz Kolbert, Naomie Oreskes have pounded the oil plutocracy drum for decades. Let's give them huge win! Thank you, Bill.
There are other forces at work regarding weather systems.
https://open.substack.com/pub/gregreese/p/how-to-steer-hurricanes-flood-homes?r=414h6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“Project Cirrus was the first Official attempt to modify a hurricane. It was run by General Electric with the support of the US military. The official theory was that by changing the temperature outside the eye-wall of a hurricane, which they did by seeding the clouds with various compounds such as silver iodide, a decrease in strong winds will result.
“On October 13, 1947, Project Cirrus targeted a hurricane heading out to sea. Approximately 180 pounds of dry ice was dropped into the clouds. The crew then reported a "pronounced modification of the cloud deck". And the hurricane abruptly changed direction and made landfall near Savannah, Georgia. The public blamed the government.
“Irving Langmuir, who pioneered General Electric’s atmospheric research department, and admired that the project was about learning how to weaponize the weather, also claimed the reversal of the hurricane had been caused by the project, but the government denied it for twelve years.