HUGE Throng at Climate March, But Will It Make A Difference?

Big crowds at the People's Climate March
Sunday in New York.  

The powers that be who keep track of such things  have pretty much settled on crowd estimates of 310,000 or so people who marched in Sunday's People's Climate March in New York City.

That's more than was generally expected, and together with a bunch of satellite marches worldwide, there was quite a turnout, to be sure.

One of the lead organizers, Bill McKibben, a climate activist (and fellow Vermonter!) said this was the largest demonstration by people concerned with climate change.

Which means theres a groundswell out there on the issue of climate change. The question is, will the New York march and all the other demonstrations make a difference? I frankly wonder.

My skepticism and cynicism isn't meant to insult or disparage all those people who took part in marches Sunday. If people feel strongly about anything, they should march in the streets, and the should make their voices heard.

I don't know if all these people marching would make an immediate change, but surely nothing would happen with regard to climate change policy if nobody marched.

So the People's Climate March was definitely a good thing.

Streets filled with climate demonstrators
in New York Sunday.  

Now, how will the policy makers react? This is where my cynicism kicks in. The march in New York was timed to coincide with a big United Nations meeting on climate. But the UN is pretty famous for putting out great reports on climate change, but not doing much on policy to combat it.

What about politicians?  Especially in the United States. Gridlock seems to have become a national tradition, especially in Congress, so nothing will happen, I fear.

This is especially the case because it's become a matter of faith, facts be damned, among both the conservatives and especially the Tea Party types that climate change is just a big hoax imposed on us by people who hate freedom.

Not to mention climate scientists who supposedly are raking in zillions of dollars in federal grants by studying climate change and sounding the alarm.

Like somebody's going to become a millionaire by poking probes into decaying ice fields in Greenland amid horrible weather for a few months.

But anyway, the conservatives. The very right wing Breitbart.com had the following headline for their People's Climate March story on Sunday: "Thousands Take To Streets Worldwide To Demand More Taxes, Less Energy."

That's the mindset we're working with, folks.  Supposedly serious policymakers actually believe headlines like that.  This is why I'm dubious about political leadership.

Well, then, maybe industry, business and many of those thousands of people, and others, will just make end runs around the obstinate politicians and take matters into their own hands. There does seem to be a thriving alternative energy industry popping up.    Investors, jobseekers and just about everybody else ought to like that.

The insurance industry, with a perfectly sensible eye on their bottom line, is taking climate change seriously.

But then you have Big Oil and those types, who are trying to preserve their business model, which means burning as much fossil fuel as possible.

I bring these up because industry does seem to have the lobbying power to control Congress, and thus policy. The only way we're going to seriously combat climate change is if the power of industry lobbyists sways more toward dealing with, rather than ignoring climate change.

I still wonder who will win this power game. Marches like the one on Sunday are a heads up there is some people power out there trying to sway things.

But as successful as Sunday's demonstrations were, the peaceful pressure from the likes of McKibben and all those placard waving marchers is going to have to continue and intensify.

Just like climate change itself.

An Outage Outrage: National Weather Service Warning System Fails Amid East Coast Tornadoes

For about a half hour late Thursday afternoon, as tornadic supercells, vicious hailstorms and terrible winds threatened millions of people along the East Coast, the National Weather Service warning system failed.  

A semi is blown over after a possible tornado
 Thursday along Interstate 88 northwest of Albany, N.Y. 

That meant few people could get timely warnings.

Also radar images from the National Weather Service were down, so people were stymied at tracking severe storms and supercells roaming the Northeast.

Capital Weather Gang says the outage lasted from 4:06 to 4:37 p.m. Thursday, during the height of the severe weather.

Operations were also affected around Denver, which was also under a tornado warning.

Capital Weather Gang also obtained a National Weather Service email detailing the problem.  "It appears that all NWS warnings did not properly disseminate during the outage, and significant severe weather was occurring during the outage," according to the e-mail.

The problem was apparently caused by an ongoing upgrade to a computer firewall.

This fiasco raised a lot of questions about the lack of redundancy in the National Weather Service's warning system.

It's true private forecasters, such as the Weather Channel, AccuWeather, and WeatherNation can spread warnings, but you really need a truly national, non-business, government agency to issue consistent warnings during dangerous weather.

Plus, most media outlets rely upon the National Weather Service to provide warnings. Most people it seems, tune into radio and TV when dangerous weather threatens, so National Weather Service alerts are crucial.

Why doesn't the National Weather Service have the right resources to do this?  I'm sure a lot of people were caught out in the big hailstorms in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware today because they didn't get warnings.

The scary thing is, a likely tornado, that was causing damage, was heading toward the Albany, New York metro region when the outage happened. The storm weakened before reaching Albany, which is a good thing.

I wonder if anybody got hurt because of this situation. Or worse, will this kind of failure happen again when a big tornado is bearing down on a city? Will people die because of system failures at the National Weather Service?

I can only imagine the intense frustration among the excellent meteorologists at the National Weather Service over this issue.

Meteorologist and Slate writer Eric Holthaus said there have several, less serious computer glitches and failures in the last six weeks.

Holthaus wrote:  "Outages like this can't continue. The National Weather Service should immediately implement redundancy into their computer systems to ensure the people they serve - us- aren't kept in the dark when dangerous weather approaches. Until then, the system in place is an embarrassment to the diligent scientists that work there."

I couldn't agree more, Eric.

U.S. Wildfire Fighting Budget Not Up To Snuff, Says Government Agency

The drought on the West Coast and in the Southwest means the wild fire season this year in that neck of the woods looks like it will be a bad one.  

A California wildfire last year.  

Unfortunately, it looks like there might not be enough money budgeted to fight the fires. 

In a press release issued last week, the USDA said they expect a shortfall of $470 million to fight fires this season.

Fighting these fires is expensive. The government has budgeted $1.4 billion to fight the fires, and the USDA forecasts  at least $1.8 billion will be needed.

Of course, if the government runs out of money to fight fires, they won't put their fire hoses and water dropping aircraft away. They'll continue to battle the blazes, and just take money from other programs, some of which would help prevent or mitigate future fires, according to the USDA.

The cost of fire fighting has gone up for two main reasons. Fire seasons are longer and worse than they used to be, probably because of climate change.  Over the past three decades the fire season length has increased by more than two moths and the annual acreage burned in the U.S. has more than doubled to 7 million acres annually.

And a lot of us are building houses in woodsy places that easily go up in flames.

So firefighters have to spend a lot of resources trying to protect those houses.

Hmm. Maybe building a dream house in some tinder dry wilderness isn't such a good idea after all.