The Oncoming Milton

As I write this, a hurricane formed off the coast of Mexico and is projected to do something few hurricanes do: head straight east towards Florida. The models all predict Milton will hit the Tampa Bay area - between St. Petersburg and Bradenton - by Wednesday night. It's already a Category 5 and threatening to be one of the strongest storms we've ever seen (thank you, decades of climate denialism!). Even if an incoming northern front can break Milton into a lesser Cat, we're talking devastating storm surges along the Tampa Bay shoreline to where everything south of Clearwater and half the landmass in Tampa itself gets washed away forever.

I am living right in the path of that monster. And yet, I have my duty to my workplace: I have to stay and prep the library with my coworkers for any possible damage. By the time we're done with that, I won't have time to get out of the way of Milton. I'll have to do what I've done before: Hunker down with my cats, pray that my place doesn't get destroyed by high winds and that the flooding won't happen in my area, and wait for the power to come back on.

This is going to be a stressful week.

I'll try to blog once or twice before the power goes, but if I don't make it... If you don't hear from me by next week... Promise me you'll vote for Kamala Harris and every Democratic candidate across the board and stop that Shitgibbon once and for all.

(muttering) why the fuck won't that Weather Space Laser flatten the hell out of Mar-A-Lago, huh...?

DeSantis Spite Making Florida Less Livable

It gets frustrating living in a hell hole where the political leadership WANTS to keep the state a hell hole out of partisan spite.

Evidence: The recent report out of the Tampa Bay Times about how the Florida Republicans rejected federal funding to fight automobile emissions and create cleaner air for the state residents (via Jack Prator and Max Chesnes).

Congress in 2021 provided $6.4 billion to states to curb tailpipe emissions and reduce the effects of climate change.

Florida was set to receive $320 million, the third most of any state.

The state Department of Transportation began drafting a plan to add trucker parking at rest stops, which staff said could fix the statewide shortage that kept drivers on the road longer, polluting more, as they searched for a place to stop.

The plan also suggested spending the money on things like electric buses and roundabouts, which reduce the amount of time idling cars sputter out climate-warming emissions at traffic lights.

But last month, the department secretary, Jared Perdue, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation declining participation in the federal program.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Perdue said in the letter that the program was an example of government overreach that was “the continued politicization of our roadways,” echoing statements made by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said that climate change is “politicization of the weather.”

To my knowledge, the federal funding didn't include any requirements for state Republican officials to make acts of public fealty to our Democratic overlords. The only ones making this a partisan politicized controversy are DeSantis and his GOP lackeys!

Florida now stands alone as the only state to say it would turn down the money, federal officials told the Tampa Bay Times. Any mention of the plan was wiped from the state’s website...

Even Texas, whose governor often tries to outshine DeSantis on conservative credentials, plans to take its share of $641 million, officials there told the Times...

Do you see that, DeSantis? Even your fellow Red State governors are taking the federal money, you know why? 'CAUSE IT'S MONEY YOU FOOL, ALREADY PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS, AND THEY NEED IT TO BALANCE THEIR STATE BUDGETS!

The stupid, it's choking us...

This isn't happening in other GOP-controlled states because those states are not led by an overly ambitious trump-wannabe moron campaigning for the 2024 Presidential nomination. But this is all happening as DeSantis' own campaign is falling apart with more advisors fleeing a sinking ship of a shoddy effort (via Tom Boggioni at Raw Story):

Strategist Jeff Roe walked away on Saturday night, dealing yet another blow to the DeSantis campaign that has been plagued by firings and layoffs as the Florida governor's attempt to displace Donald Trump as the face of the Republican party went nowhere with conservative voters.

According to a report from Politico, the Washington Post report on backbiting and finger-pointing in the PAC led Roe to call it quits, issuing a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he claimed that he, "cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in the Washington Post today. They are not true and an unwanted distraction at a critical time for Governor DeSantis.”

The implication being that yeah it's probably even worse behind closed doors.

It's not helping DeSantis any better that the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) - a relatively toothless oversight committee - is filing an investigation over complaints that DeSantis is improperly coordinating with what are supposed to be independent PAC groups.

All this wasted effort, and yet DeSantis still has to preen and pose and pander to the Far Right - anti-government, anti-regulatory, anti-community - by pulling these self-spiting stunts denying much-needed funding for eco-friendly efforts that could well improve the quality of life for Florida residents.

This reminds me of the time Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott as Florida Governor refused federal funding for high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando - something that would have eased the insane traffic woes of I-4, and improved tourism between Disney World and the beaches - out of partisan anti-Obama spite - even as state Republicans were begging for the money going to their constituents - and then turning around like an idiot asking the feds if he could have the money instead for "more highways" (NO, the money was meant for rail you moron!)

The Republican leadership of Florida would rather let the environment turn toxic on their own voting residents than let the Democratic-controlled federal government send one penny for saving our health and livelihoods.

We are one Category 5 super-hurricane away from Mother Nature washing the Sunshine State into the Gulf of Mexico, but DeSantis and his wingnut handlers wouldn't give a rat's ass if that happened.

Gods help us.

Texas Is Broken Part II: Electric Boo-Boo

It wasn't too long ago (February this month) I wrote about the GREAT STATE OF TEXAS - home to the second-most number of Americans - killing itself in a deep freeze due to serious mismanagement by their current Republican-dominate state officials.

Well, here's the other side of the coin with regards to the Climate Change Extremes everybody has been screaming about the last 30 years: As of now, Texas is killing itself with a severe heat wave that's draining their broken electrical grid (via Erin Douglas at Texas Tribune):

Texas’ main power grid struggled to keep up with the demand for electricity Monday, prompting the operator to ask Texans to conserve power until Friday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said in a statement Monday that a significant number of unexpected power plant outages, combined with expected record use of electricity due to hot weather, has resulted in tight grid conditions. Approximately 12,000 megawatts of generation were offline Monday, or enough to power 2.4 million homes on a hot summer day.

ERCOT officials said the power plant outages were unexpected — and could not provide details as to what could be causing them...

Here's a possibility: the likelihood that inaction by the political and corporate leadership for the past 20 years to expand or update the power grid to handle the growing population and energy demands that go with all that (it doesn't help that in the past 20 years, our reliance on electronics has increased) has created too much demand and not enough reserves. Anyway, back to Douglas:

The conservation request comes at a time of heightened anxiety around electricity after the state’s catastrophic February power outages left millions without power for days. Those outages, which were prompted by a severe winter storm, may have killed as many as 700 people, according to an analysis of mortality data by BuzzFeed News...

Of the plants offline, about 9,600 megawatts of power, or nearly 80% of the outages, are from thermal power sources, which in Texas are largely natural-gas-fired power plants. That’s several times what ERCOT usually sees offline for thermal generation maintenance during a summer day. Typically, only about 3,600 megawatts of thermal generation are offline this time of year...

The article comments how in April they shut down plants to handle repairs from the February freeze-out, but questions should remain that the power stations in Texas have not fully recovered from all that damage done.

Just to include here for comment, follow this link to see Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice doing us a solid by collating all of the Twitter comments noting how the inept GOP leadership for Texas is pretty much letting the state boil away. 

For all the schadenfreude the political attacks provide - aimed at a group of self-satisfied Republican leaders who keep proving their unwillingness to ACTUALLY LEAD their state - this is again a very serious problem for Texas.

Heat waves are nasty and lethal: Thousands can die in a prolonged heat wave, and Southwest United States - Texas included - is facing one of the most severe ones in years. 

As a Floridian, let me tell you: the difference between living in an air-conditioned room at 76 F over a room heated up to 82 F - which will happen at the least when the power goes - means being able to breathe normally (for starters). Opening the windows won't help if the outdoors is hotter than being in the shade, and if humidity is there to make it worse. Without power, without even ceiling fans to help circulate the air to cut down on humidity, people won't just feel uncomfortable... people will collapse and suffer heat strokes.

That ERCOT council - encouraging people to raise their thermometers just a tad - is overlooking how many of their residents won't, because they'll only worry about their own comfort and risk any blackouts that might roll along at any time of the day. It does not help that the way things are going, the amount of power left to share is so minimal that blackouts are unavoidable... And what happens then???

All because the powers that be that have run the GREAT STATE OF TEXAS - not just the modern Republicans but the conservative Democrats of yore - have been libertarian-driven anti-federalism nightmares who refused to properly regulate their state's energy needs and who obsess over culture war politics over actual governance.

Governor Abbott just promised to spend millions on continuing trump's ill-advised and foolish border wall project, all the while failing to spend millions on upgrading the state's power grid or even connect themselves to neighboring states to help manage power demands. The latest "reforms" that Abbott passed did not do anything to ween the state away from natural gas, which proved unreliable during the February freeze and is proving unreliable now.

And given how Bitcoin mining seems to chew up electricity like tasty gummi bears, Abbott's recent call to promote cryptocurrency in Texas could be what's causing the power shortages of the past few weeks. 

The Republican leadership of Texas - beholden to oil and gas corporations above all others - does not want to make the hard choices that the residents of Texas need right now to save their own lives.

And it's going to be the elderly, and the young, and the poor, who are all going to be hurt by this.

Can't wait for Part III of Texas' next big disaster, which is an upcoming hurricane season that will not show mercy on anyone.

Gods help them. 

Because the Republicans really won't.

Texas Is Frozen (w/Update)

(Update: Thanks to Infidel753 for adding this entry to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to help out any Texans you know and to be ready for any further GOP bullshit dodging of accountability over this. P.S. please check out the rest of my blog, thank ye!)

Well, a winter vortex thingee swirled across the United States and apparently the entire state of Texas got wiped out in the process. Via Jaclyn Diaz at NPR: 

As the state deals with piercing cold, roughly 4.4 million Texas customers were without power as of midday Tuesday after the power grid failed.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced late Monday that the Texas National Guard was being deployed to help get people to heating centers. He said state agencies are sending additional resources and personnel to help local officials clear roadways and to assist essential workers...

Attempts to keep the heat and lights on at the onset of the severe weather failed. Rolling blackouts scheduled early Monday to conserve Texas' energy supply turned into extended blackouts that are now expected to last well into Tuesday, and possibly longer, energy company officials said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said the grid lost some 34,000 megawatts of power. Energy sources powering the grid were knocked offline, most of which were powered by natural gas, coal or nuclear energy, according to Houston Public Radio.

The state grid was already facing some shortages because of frozen wind turbines and limited gas supply...

In the meantime, Republicans are doing Republican things by helping their communities survive the harsh cold blaming Democrats and liberals and Green energy policies that have nothing to do with the busted things Republicans failed to fix. Notice Diaz's article mentioning the major parts of the energy grid were gas, coal, and nuclear? Republicans promptly attacked the wind turbines instead (via Kate Aronoff at New Republic (paywall)):

Within a few hours of grid horror stories percolating out beyond the Lone Star state, outlets like Breitbart and the Wall Street Journal began to publish grisly tales of a green revolution: that an abundance of wind turbines in Texas had been rendered practically useless by a chilly day and posed a danger to state residents. “The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died,” said Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Yet a surprising number of mainstream media outlets also adopted the narrative. Reuters, for example, mentioned offline wind resources in the first lines of its story about the outages—illustrated with a picture showing a field of turbines. “Frozen wind turbines contribute to rolling power blackouts across Texas,” ran CNN’s headline. The New York Times led with it, too...

But here's what failed:

As of Monday afternoon, 26 of the 34 gigawatts in ERCOT’s grid that had gone offline were from “thermal” sources, meaning gas and coal. The system’s total installed capacity in the system, Power magazine’s Sonal Patel noted, is around 77.2 GW. Wind and solar power, meanwhile, produced near or even above planned capacity, according to energy analyst Jesse Jenkins, as only small amounts of wind and solar are utilized in peaking conditions. Wind turbines did indeed freeze, and did eventually underperform. But so did natural gas infrastructure, and to a far greater degree. That proved to be a much larger problem since it makes up such a huge proportion of the state’s power supply in extreme weather. And frozen power lines and equipment were a far bigger cause of outages than generation shortages.

And there's other factors at work here involving the poorly designed infrastructure, as Aronoff points out:

About 90 percent of Texas’s grid is part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Save for a few lines, ERCOT is largely cut off from power in neighboring states. That’s because back in 1935, the state government was eager to avoid being regulated under the Federal Power Act. The Federal Power Act was passed to regulate interstate electricity sales, in the wake of massive scandals involving utility holding companies. It established what’s known today as the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission. To this day, Texas exists outside of FERC’s jurisdiction.

In short: Texas is screwed up this winter thanks to about two decades worth of Republican state-level misrule that failed to do anything to upgrade an aging power grid, and a Texan anti-federalist states-rights mindset that denied themselves the chance to plug into neighboring grids in case of emergencies.

And speaking of how their carbon-based energy resources are failing Texas, one of the reasons the state is getting caught unprepared for this severe shift in weather is because of the ongoing Far Right dismissal of climate change being real. For all the talk about global warming - and the constant Republican talking point of "oh look it's snowing outside, global warming is a myth!" - what's happening with climate change are the extremes getting deeper and catastrophic: The hot days are getting hotter and the cold days are going to get colder. That's what this "winter snap" represents.

What's happening now is a tragedy, compounded by the ongoing pandemic, with millions of lives at risk well into the rest of this week (depending on if any further cold fronts show up).

What should happen after all this passes is a reckoning: The state of Texas is going to HAVE to do something - and yes, it will involve spending public funds - to upgrade their broken energy resources system and prevent future disasters like this.

This should also mean every Republican official and every conservative pundit eating crow and getting drummed out of office in shame for their failures to serve the public trust and report the facts.

Texas may be frozen in ice now, but that state has been frozen in a self-serving self-destructive mindset for decades, going into centuries. That mental glacier is what's causing the deaths and tragedies now, and it needs to go.

Red Skies in 2020

Should have taken warning, it's just\
People mourning\
Running, hiding, lost\
You can't find\
Find a place to go\
So it's...

Red skies at night\
Red skies at night\
Oh oh...

- "Red Skies," The Fixx

This is not good (from Astig Magaling's channel):

(from BOSSCARS channel):

This one has better music but is more unsettling:

This isn't Blade Runner. This is Real Life.

Right now, the West Coast is shrouded in the smoke of dozens of wild fires from Washington to Southern California, all part of an ongoing cycle of bad weather and hotter-than-normal conditions. To quote from Jane Hu at Slate:

In case you’re wondering if this is normal: It absolutely is not. Historically, fire season in California peaks in October, and Denver hasn’t gotten snow in September for two decades. Often, vacationers in San Francisco complain that the weather isn’t as warm as they were expecting for California—“the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” people like to say—but the Bay Area hit 100 degrees this weekend. And these aberrant patterns aren’t the only extreme weather we’ve seen across the U.S. lately: Hurricane Laura pummeled the Louisiana coast less than two weeks ago, and a couple of weeks before that, a derecho whipped through Iowa, where winds over 100 miles an hour damaged more than 800 buildings and up to 43 percent of the state’s soybean and corn crop, according to Radio Iowa...

Hurricane Laura was two weeks ago and there's barely any talk about the damage done there. The storm that hit Iowa was a freaky thing called a derecho and the scale of it has wrecked the state for years to come.

And we've already forgotten as a planet the devastating wildfires of Australia that opened this annus horribilis of 2020. We're talking an environmental disaster that will take decades for humanity to recover and that may wipe out the natural wildlife forever.

Back here in the U.S., all of this is taking place with a Republican-led federal government that has said little and doesn't seem to be doing anything to help with resolving the climate change woes that are fueling the extremes in national and global weather.

None of this is normal weather. None of this is getting fixed as long as the Republicans drag their feet on any action that might dare cut into CEO bonus pay.

And it's still red skies tonight on the West Coast...

How the Year 2019 Ends: In Fire

I woke up this morning to reports of the US Embassy in Baghdad under siege by protesters angered up by recent military strikes on Shiite strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

For almost a month now, the entire continent/nation of Australia has been on fire due to prolonged drought, rising ocean temperatures, and an ungodly heat wave (it's Summer on that side of the Equator) that are all part of the climate change nearly every scientist has been screaming was coming to kill us all. Those eco-disaster movies from ten-twenty years ago? THEY ARE HAPPENING NOW IN REAL LIFE.

India is on fire this month due to their nationalist Hindu government pushing a citizenship law that would specifically exclude Muslims. It doesn't help that the nation is roiling from a growing rape gang crisis threatening the safety of every woman who lives there.

Over the past ten days the number of antisemitic attacks in America have gotten worse, ranging from vandalism to street assaults to someone with a machete stabbing Orthodox Jews at a rabbi gathering in Brooklyn.

Boris Johnson has cleared out nearly every obstruction in his quest to fulfill a Hard Brexit pullout from the EU, which is now including efforts by the Tories to privatize their National Health Service and make it more like the United States (welcome to medical bankruptcy, Brits!). We are looking at a January 31 2020 where a No-Deal Brexit will happen because the EU won't cave on any of Boris' demands.

Israel is forcing itself into yet another general election because the last three tries failed to form a unified government. It does not help that current PM Netanyahu is facing corruption charges... but refuses to leave office and indeed got an overwhelming vote of confidence from his own party meaning that unless enough voters break with their own parties to support an opposition majority they are stuck in gridlock.

China has entered its umpteenth month (since June at least) of Hong Kong protests over the city/region's autonomous status, which is a serious civil/human rights fight that China will never recognize. Not to mention the ongoing human rights abuses of concentration camps punishing millions of Uyghurs for their religious/ethnic differences.

We're still coping with the ongoing Impeachment of President Loser of the Popular Vote and Eternal Shitgibbon donald trump. With additional evidence showing that members of his foreign policy team - Sec of State Pompeo, Sec of Defense Esper, and NSA John Bolton (!) - confronted trump in late August (before the Whistleblower concerns got to Congress) to convince him to release Ukrainian military aid (trump refused). Not only reaffirming other evidence of trump's extortion racket but that key members of his administration have evidence they still need to present for the Impeachment proceedings.

Everything is chaos.

Everything is on fire.

Welcome to 2020.

It's going to get crazier from here.

Brief Current Status Update: Hurricane Dorian Situation

Kinda sitting here right now waiting on a hurricane that could still slide across Florida and cause some serious damage to us. Dorian, which started off as something that threatened to cross the southern half of the Sunshine State by this weekend, has slowed over the Atlantic and is now hovering over the Bahamas. Problem is, by slowing down the storm was able to strengthen up to a Category 5 (!) with reported winds above 200 MPH (!!!). The island chain is likely getting crushed by the power of Dorian as I type this, and it's horrifying to think how people living there are going to survive that.

We've been seeing more and more of these Cat 5s, at least once every year since 2016, and the vast majority of 5s have happened since 2000. This is, let's be honest, a clear sign of global warming leading directly to climate change (warmer waters and winds are primary factors in creating these storms). The hotter things are getting, the stronger these hurricanes are going to get.

In the meantime, I got paperwork to keep up with... while I keep the Weather Channel on the TV in the background. Good luck, citizens.

Drowning in trump's Bluster

Today wasn't even much of a surprise. OF COURSE trump would do this:

Donald Trump has confirmed that he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, in effect ensuring the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases will quit the international effort to address dangerous global warming.

The US will remove itself from the deal, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not party to the Paris agreement. There will be no penalty for leaving, with the Paris deal based upon the premise of voluntary emissions reductions by participating countries...

“We will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” Trump said. “If we can, that’s great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”

Would it help to note that nearly EVERY OTHER NATION - including oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and RUSSIA (!) - are staying with the Paris Climate Accords?

Would it help to note that every one of trump's excuses to take the United States out of those Accords are verifiable lies?

trump, meanwhile, seems to think he can "re-negotiate" his own climate deals with individual nations, convinced "he" can get deals that would be "fair"... which by his measurements means "deals in which I steal a shitload of other people's money."

As always, he's creating problems by making everything about him.

You see, here's the little secret that most of the Beltway Media won't talk about. The real reason trump is exiting the climate change accords. It's not over facts, it's not even over standard Republican ideology of opposing everything Democrats support.

trump is exiting the Paris Climate Accords out of personal spite.

To Krugman over at the New York Times, he's thinking of this in terms of Republican animosity towards Obama - who did agree to the Paris Accords - as the simplest explanation:

Pay any attention to modern right-wing discourse — including op-ed articles by top Trump officials — and you find deep hostility to any notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting people and blowing things up.

Beyond this, much of today’s right seems driven above all by animus toward liberals rather than specific issues. If liberals are for it, they’re against it. If liberals hate it, it’s good. Add to this the anti-intellectualism of the G.O.P. base, for whom scientific consensus on an issue is a minus, not a plus, with extra bonus points for undermining anything associated with President Barack Obama.

And if all this sounds too petty and vindictive to be the basis for momentous policy decisions, consider the character of the man in the White House. Need I say more?

But for trump to do this now, so quickly after his disastrous trip abroad, tells me that he's doing this because his tiny little fee-fees got hurt and he's swinging back at Europe in the worst way possible.

See, trump went overseas on his first big trip as President Loser of the Popular Vote, and with all the crazy things he did and the crazier things he said and the insulting crap he attempted to pull off, trump came back in a foul mood knowing full well he'd been made a laughingstock.

Listen to trump's speech. He kept obsessing over being treated fairly, and commented "We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won't be."

Who's "we," kemosabe?

The world leaders, the other countries, they were laughing at YOU.

And they still are laughing at you: Because like the wounded eight-year-old bully you are, you came back out onto the playground with mud on your face still threatening to beat up the entire school that showed you that mudpit in the first place.

The rest of the world is going to go on with their climate accord deals because 1) they are driven by the empirical evidence that climate change is a real threat, 2) they are able to make money off of switching to carbon-neutral or eco-friendly energy platforms, 3) they aren't idiots.

Meanwhile, the United States is going to drown in the ocean that is trump's Ignorance.

This move hurts US more than it hurts the world. Look at what's happening. Look at the alienation trump is causing with his destructive travel bans. Look at the way trump caused discord over his failure to recognize Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Look at how trump treated allies that have stood with the United States for decades to create a period of remarkable global stability (granted, this covers most of Western civilization, there remains a lot of bad stuff on the fringes).

Forget the Wall trump keeps threatening to put up on the Mexican border. trump has pretty much built a wall of Isolationism around the United States and has brought an end to the era of the United States as a global power. Nobody in their right mind can claim the President is the Leader of the Free World anymore. trump is only leading himself.

He's giving Putin (who wants the United States to fall as a global power) everything he wants to weaken Western Europe. He's giving China (who can now lead on green energy issues) everything they want to become the biggest Superpower on the planet.

This is what you voted for, 62 million Americans: an easily bruised ego-driven monster cutting off our own collective nose to spite the rest of the world.

Damn you.

Couldn't Stand the Weather

So here I am facing the oncoming storm of Hurricane Matthew, hunkering down while my library closes tomorrow with hope that the damage in central Florida is minimal and that things will be normal by Saturday.

And here's Rude Pundit yelling and screaming because Matt Drudge - one of the founding members of the Far Right Noise Machine from the 1990s - is being an idiot about hurricanes:

Because, see, in his Twitter feed and on his website of the godforsaken, Drudge has said that the National Hurricane Center is hyping Matthew and lying about wind speed because they want to "make exaggerated point on climate" change. He has also declared that the winds in Haiti weren't as intense as reported so we shouldn't be as worried because, apparently, meteorologists get off on gridlock and panicked people, I guess...

Drudge's original Tweet:

Here's what Drudge is selling. The Far Right has long accused the scientists pushing a political agenda - a Communist-inspired New-World-Order - to hurt our energy producers by going after the negative effects carbon-based pollution has on our global climate. Rather than accept the slight possibility that 98 percent of scientists who study and research this stuff are actually freaking out that our planet is artificially heating up into a civilization-ending extinction-level event, the media elites of the Far Right alongside the Republican party leadership try to convince enough people that global warming is a myth and that every warning of environmental disaster is exaggerated or worse.

The reason there's a controversy over Climate Change is because the Far Right WANTS the controversy. Any settled acceptance of this fact would destroy one of the key elements of their precious Conservative Narrative.

Ergo, the strength and destructiveness of hurricanes has to be downplayed or mocked: Any proof that the weather is becoming more extreme due to the temperature shifts would ruin the Far Right wingnuts.

Apparently, the Weather Channel is now part of the Vast Liberal Conspiracy alongside NASA, NOAA, Al Gore, and pretty much anybody with a degree in Meteorology, Environmental Sciences, or (insert most college degrees here).

Worse, we got idiots claiming Obama controls the weather.

NO, YOU MORONS, THAT WAS DESTRO. /headdesk

In the meantime, if Drudge questions the strength of Hurricane Matthew, he's more than welcome to head out to West Palm Beach and stand on US A1A along the beaches and measure that storm surge himself. See what results he gets.

Another Florida Folly

Even with all the general weirdness and madness of a last-minute campaign run for a hotly-contested gubertorial race here in the Sunshine State, we've got this going on as a distraction:

This map is from a coalition operating out of the City of South Miami.  City officials want to split off the southern half of the state so they can form their own, one that would do something about the climate change/flooding doom facing the coastline:

...(Vice Mayor) Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn't providing South Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it comes to sea-level rising.

"We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee," Harris said. "I don’t care what people think -- it’s not a matter of electing the right people."

The solution isn't that simple, crew.

I think I've argued in other articles about secession that the logistics of such a move - either to become an independent nation or a separate state - would be self-defeating.  While the move to become a state won't be as risky - the federal government is still there providing a foundation - there are still massive issues over revenue sources, property rights, and bureaucratic snafus.

First off, the existing state government has to sign off on this.  Considering South Florida is a major financial, trade, tourist, entertainment metropolis (Miami is one of the major global cities), Tallahassee may be loathe to give up that tax base.  That this coalition wants to grab the next two major metros in Tampa Bay and Orlando - as well as key metros like Ft. Myers/Naples and Lakeland - is going to leave North Florida with just Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Ocala and Gainesville (with J'Ville the only real metro).  Tampa is another major financial hub and seaport... Orlando has Mickey Mouse and global tourism money... South Florida is going to be taking a lot of money off the table and there's no way our current government will give up all of that.

The first thought I had when I saw the makeshift map up there was "why the hell does Miami-Dade want to include all the redneck counties between there and Tampa/Orlando?"  Reading that article helped spell it out: Orlando/Orange County is where Florida manages the water resources that South Florida needs.  But still, the logic of the map eludes me, because there's another thing that the secession types keep overlooking: even with a single state there are cultural and socio-political rivalries that prevent such clean break-ups ever happening.

Florida is not easily divided into two parts.  At best - at the very least - it can be divided into six territories.  If the state of Florida ever fractures it most likely go like this:

• South Florida (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, the Keys) - Everything from West Palm Beach down to Homestead is one big metro.  If you've ever read the Dredd comics, where they came up with megacities that engulfed entire states, you might get an idea what South Florida looks like: an uninterrupted chain of highways packed with suburbs, slums, business towers, and sports arenas.  The Keys from Largo to West may not be packed, but it's pretty much joined to the hip to Miami-Dade - literally, it's the only way in or out by car - and part of the same tourism appeal and Caribbean culture.  This might include Martin County, maybe even Saint Lucie...
• Southwest Florida (Ft.Myers-Lee, Collier, Charlotte, inner counties south of Polk) - pretty much the last part of Florida to get suburbanized, and one with a lot of political-religious-social cohesion along the coastline.  The inner counties are mostly farmland and some of the least populated counties.  They'd have to choose between Miami-Broward-Palm Beach (an area they share little with), Tampa Bay/Polk County (same issue), or form their own faction (with Martin/St. Lucie/Okechobee Counties) surrounding the key geographic feature of the area, Lake Okechobee.  Taking their chances with Ft. Myers/Naples metro would be the likeliest move...
• Tampa Bay (Pinellas, Tampa-Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Polk, Pasco, maybe Hernando Counties) - Defined by one of the key growth markets of the early 1980s that made Florida the 4th most populous state within a decade, not as big a financial market as South Florida but still a major trading port anchored by a coherent media market, healthcare industry, and sports franchises.  They'd get Sarasota County because the city of Sarasota is too close to the southern reach of the metro to split off with Port Charlotte-Ft. Myers-Naples...
• Greater Orlando (Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Brevard, Indian River, Volusia, Lake, maybe Sumter Counties) - the tourist Mecca.  Orlando brings in the people for the amusement parks, Brevard and Volusia brings in the beach tourists eager to visit Daytona and Cocoa Beach.  The South Florida group foolishly cuts off Seminole from Orange, despite the urban reach of Orlando overlapping Seminole as an outlying suburban circle of Purgatory. This faction could conceivably pick up Polk County if they make the right offer (more condos in Haines City!)...
• Northeast Florida/Jacksonville (Jacksonville/Duval, every County east of the Suwanee River) - Where North Florida kinda becomes indistinguishable from the Deep South, and has more in common with Georgia than the urban centers of Central/South Florida.  Jacksonville would be the major seaport and business center, with Gainesville as the cultural/academic center.  There's little else up here except for horse farms and cattle.
• Northwest Florida (Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City, sparsely populated Counties west of the Suwanee) - the other half of North Florida, the Panhandle.  Tallahassee is the state capitol and home of two universities (Florida St. the big draw), and then you gotta drive three hours and a time zone to get to Pensacola and that's pretty much it.  There's an airbase where they test UFOs and some decent southern-facing beaches, but that's it.  And if the state goes bonkers and splits up like this, there's a good chance Pensacola might just pack up and merge with Alabama, as that region has more in common with Mobile than Tallahassee...

Even the scenario I've painted here is unlikely: the state could easily fracture into ten parts as much as six, and there's little incentive for the sections to split off (yes, even for South Florida) because the costs of forming a new government - new elected officials, new government buildings, new bureaucracies to manage the graft - are just too damn high.  Mind, South Florida (just Miami-to-Palm Beach alone) might have enough financial muscle to pull it off, but barely.  The other parts of Florida would never afford such a move.

The other point of this proposed split is that South Florida residents are increasingly worried about the global climate change - the global warming in particular - that's due to flood out most of Dade and Broward Counties by 2020.  The costs of pumping out rising seawater from the sewers and streets are getting higher by the month: flooding is not happening during hurricanes anymore, it's happening during peak moon tides.  The response from Tallahassee has been to basically handle it as an ongoing crisis kept as far away from the news cameras as possible: but sooner rather than later the beaches that the state prides on won't even be there anymore, and boating won't be done on the Intercoastal, it will be done on Hwy 441.

But if South Miami/Florida thinks splitting itself off to form its own government will help matters, it won't by much.  They'll still have to cope with the costs of pumping and reinforcing flood walls, for one thing.  They'll have to contend with the fact our federal government - cough, oil-and-coal-paid-for pols with both parties, cough - is ignoring the problems of climate change altogether, something that a new state still won't be able to overcome.  And considering the map that the South Miami group is pushing, the new state government they'll form is going to include a lot of Republican-leaning red counties (Ft. Myers and Naples, Lakeland and Orlando and the infamous I-4 Corridor, the suburban outlets of Tampa and Pinellas) that might counter the more urban-leaning Democratic areas of South Florida itself (not to mention the conservative Cuban population in Dade/Broward mucking up matters).

Just chalk this up as another pipe dream by a local group of concerned citizens horrified that the leadership in Tall Hassle (the nickname for the corrupt capitol of the Xanth fantasy series whose map mimics Florida's) isn't working to answer their concerns.  A better alternative than wasting time and effort to forge a new state would be focusing on CLEANING UP the political mess of the existing state by voting out the corrupt Republican bastards who are ignoring climate change in the first place.

Alright, I'm off to bed.  Just remember kids, here in Florida we've got Early Voting going on, and you all need to GET THE VOTE OUT and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN.