http://news.linktv.org Link TV News Videos (Filtered by topics: Tropical cyclone) en-us Thu, 16 May 2013 19:10:00 -0700 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://news.linktv.org/videos/one-million-evacuated-as-cyclone-slams-bangladesh?start=0 Dozens were killed and one million people evacuated from their homes as Cyclone Mahasen roared into the southern coast of Bangladesh. Mud and straw huts were flattened by heavy rains and winds, and entire villages were inundated with floods. But Mahasen, which weakened to a tropical storm as it hit landfall, did far less damage than expected. Thu, 16 May 2013 19:10:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/one-million-evacuated-as-cyclone-slams-bangladesh Bangladesh, Tropical cyclone, Flood, Extreme weather, Severe weather, Associated Press Dozens were killed and one million people evacuated from their homes as Cyclone Mahasen roared into the southern coast of Bangladesh. Mud and straw huts were flattened by heavy rains and winds, and entire villages were inundated with floods. But Mahasen, which weakened to a tropical storm as it hit landfall, did far less damage than expected. http://news.linktv.org/videos/tropical-storm-isaac-blows-republican-national-convention-off-course?start=0 Severe weather has interrupted the US Presidential campaign, and threatens to overshadow the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Organizers of the convention have reworked the schedule to accomodate tropical storm Isaac. Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:52:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/tropical-storm-isaac-blows-republican-national-convention-off-course Republican National Convention, Tampa, Florida, Tropical Storm Isaac, Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012, Mitt Romney, Severe weather, Tropical cyclone, United States, ABC News (Australia) Severe weather has interrupted the US Presidential campaign, and threatens to overshadow the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Organizers of the convention have reworked the schedule to accomodate tropical storm Isaac. http://news.linktv.org/videos/isaac-calling-but-can-haiti-withstand-another-natural-disaster?start=0 Tropical storm Isaac is hurtling toward Haiti, a country still devastated by a massive earthquake two and a half years ago. Sat, 25 Aug 2012 01:19:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/isaac-calling-but-can-haiti-withstand-another-natural-disaster Haiti, Port-au-Prince, Tropical Storm Isaac, Flash flood, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Deforestation, Poverty in Haiti, Tropical cyclone, Extreme weather, Al Jazeera English Tropical storm Isaac is hurtling toward Haiti, a country still devastated by a massive earthquake two and a half years ago. The deforested mountains around the capital, Port-au-Prince, make it vulnerable to flash flooding. Thousands of quake survivors still live in tent camps. Al Jazeera's Adam Raney reports from Port-au-Prince. http://news.linktv.org/videos/republican-national-convention-threatened-by-act-of-god?start=0 Florida Governor Rick Scott says national Republican Party officials will decide whether to cancel or delay the upcoming national convention in Tampa due to the threat from Tropical Storm Isaac. Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:01:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/republican-national-convention-threatened-by-act-of-god 2012 Republican National Convention, Tropical Storm Isaac, Rick Scott, Tampa, Florida, Florida, Republican National Convention, Republican Party (United States), Tropical cyclone, Extreme weather, Politics of the United States Florida Governor Rick Scott says national Republican Party officials will decide whether to cancel or delay the upcoming national convention in Tampa due to the threat from Tropical Storm Isaac. http://news.linktv.org/videos/philippines-thousands-trapped-as-floods-submerge-half-of-manila?start=0 Relentless rain submerged half of the sprawling Philippine capital Manila, sending emergency crews scrambling to rescue tens of thousands of stranded residents. Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:45:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/philippines-thousands-trapped-as-floods-submerge-half-of-manila Manila, Philippines, Flood, Tropical cyclone, Typhoon, Typhoon Saola, Rain, Rescue, Landslide, Extreme weather Relentless rain submerged half of the sprawling Philippine capital Manila, sending emergency crews scrambling to rescue tens of thousands of stranded residents. http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-hong-kong-battered-by-strongest-storm-in-10-years?start=0 Typhoon Vincente, the strongest storm to hit Hong Kong in 10 years, forced hundreds to seek refuge in emergency shelters and left dozens in hospital. Local transportation systems were suspended and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange delayed opening. Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:33:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-hong-kong-battered-by-strongest-storm-in-10-years Typhoon Vicente, Hong Kong, Typhoon, Storm warning, Tropical cyclone, Emergency shelter, Extreme weather, Storm damage, Raw video, Hong Kong Stock Exchange Typhoon Vincente, the strongest storm to hit Hong Kong in 10 years, forced hundreds to seek refuge in emergency shelters and left dozens in hospital. Local transportation systems were suspended and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange delayed opening after the city sent out its highest storm warning overnight. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-3-2012?start=742 Massive forest fires in Colorado, a deadly Mid-Atlantic storm, record-shattering heat across the East Coast and Midwest -- as the words "extreme weather" flash across TV screens, where are the other two words: "global warming"? Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:25:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-3-2012 Climate change, Extreme weather, Wildfire, Heat wave, United States, Tropical cyclone, Iraq, Arms Trade Treaty, Colorado, Arms industry The past two weeks have witnessed the worst forest fires in Colorado history, a deadly Mid-Atlantic storm that left 23 dead and four million without power, and a record shattering heatwave across the East Coast and Midwest that has not seen since the Dust Bowl. More than 2,000 heat records have been broken in the past week. As the words "extreme weather" flash across TV screens, where are the other two words: "global warming"? We speak to The Guardian's U.S. environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg and Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website. "What we're seeing now is the future," Masters says. "We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heatwaves, fires and storms. ... This is just the beginning." We begin today's show with a look at the extreme weather affecting large areas of the United States. Massive forest fires, heatwaves and droughts are devastating much of the country. This comes just a week after Tropical Storm Debby flooded Florida. But amidst the news coverage of this "extreme weather," we rarely hear two other words: "global warming." This is just a sampling of recent news reports. BRIAN WILLIAMS: The heatwave that's baked the Rockies and the Great Plains, now spreading east. There are 113 million Americans now in the excessive heat advisory zone. That's more than a third of the entire U.S. population. JOHN YANG: The high today here in Indianapolis? A sizzling 103 degrees. That broke a 78-year-old record. Nashville broke its all-time record, hitting 109 degrees. Authorities urged people to stay indoors and canceled outdoor events this weekend. From Atlanta: ATLANTA MAN: Smoking out here. JOHN YANG: To Chicago: CHICAGO MAN: I'm going to bring a towel soaked in ice and a bucket with ice and try to keep cool. CBC ANCHOR: U.S. National Guard is helping police in Colorado Springs in the wake of the most destructive wildfires in the state's history. Those fires have forced thousands of people to flee their homes. BRUCE MILDWURF: The fast-moving fires in Colorado have destroyed hundreds of homes and are threatening thousands more. The fires have grown so large, you can see it from space. Take a look at this video from the International Space Station. It shows the area scorched by flames in the Western states so far. WXYZ-TV ANCHOR: It's getting quite dangerous for some people, very old and the very young, especially. There's an excessive heat watch, which is basically an official way of telling you what we've been telling you for a long time. The rest of this week, lots and lots of excessive heat. Plenty of extreme weather coverage, but no mention of the role played by climate change and global warming. This comes as a relentless heatwave is now gripping the eastern United States for a fifth straight day. More than 2,000 heat records have been broken over the past week. Thousands more were set in June. Even more striking, the first day of July also broke records for the highest-ever recorded temperatures on any date at spots in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina. Meanwhile, a violent thunderstorm known as a "derecho" left a more than 700-mile trail of destruction across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic Friday, cutting power to millions, killing at least 23 people. And all of this comes as firefighters in Colorado grapple with the two most destructive wildfires in the Colorado's history. The fires spread a haze of smoke over urban areas, displaced tens of thousands of people. They left behind vast swaths of blackened forest and burned to the ground more than 600 homes. This is 76-year-old Colorado Springs resident, Damon Bowlin, after seeing the remains of his house. DAMON BOWLIN: It's just—it's heart-wrenching, rather sickening. I don't think we ever had a fear of being harmed by the fire, but when you all of a sudden realize you've lost your entire life, the thing you've been working for all of your life, and the beauty and the tranquility that we have been experienced for the past several years, and realize now there's no house, there's no place you can call home. Well, for more, we're joined by The Guardian newspaper's environmental correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg, who has just returned from reporting on the fires in Colorado. She's joining us from Washington, where her own home just regained power this morning after Friday's storm. And we're joined in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website. Here in New York, Christian Parenti is with us, professor of sustainable development at the School for International Training in Vermont and the author of several books, most recently, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Suzanne Goldenberg, let's begin with you. You're just back from Colorado. Describe what's happening there. Well, it's just huge destruction on a scale that they haven't seen before in Colorado. What makes this wildfire different from other wildfires that we've seen really is the number of houses burnt and the fact that they burned within city limits. These are not forests far away, remote from people; these are city limits and within city limits, and lots of people were affected. This particular fire also was described by firefighters across the board as extremely unpredictable. There was a moment in the middle of last week where the city's mayor was giving a press conference. He was talking about how they thought they had things under control. And then, as he spoke, on camera, right behind him, there's just this huge ball of fire burst out and came racing down the mountain and towards these homes. So this was a fire of a ferocity that hasn't been seen before. Is this what you would characterize as what some people are calling "super-sized fires"? That one's a bit hard to say, exactly. I mean, when you talk to forest scientists and fire scientists, they have a number of criteria in terms of numbers of acres that are burnt, damage caused and how severe the burning was. And they haven't gotten in there to the area yet to know how severe the damage was, whether things were burnt to the ground in the forest. They certainly were in homes. You've seen picture after picture of homes burnt down to their cement foundations. In terms of area, it's not in the hundreds of thousands of acres we've seen in the other fires. In terms of its effects, it's certainly devastating enough to rank as a super fire, but I don't know if it fits—you know, if it ticks all the boxes that would need to be ticked. Suzanne Goldenberg, the relationship between the fires in Colorado, the drenching rain in Florida, the massive heatwave that we're seeing across the country—I mean, often things don't look like they are connected, but this issue of global warming? Start in Colorado. Absolutely, climate change is a big factor here. We've had a 10-year or more drought across the West. You haven't had rain. And when you have had rain, it hasn't come at the right time or in the right quantity. Crucially, you haven't had snow. You've had really mild winters. So there isn't that big snowpack in the mountains whose gradual runoff would sort of feed the forests and the fields, give people the water they need. What you've got now across a lot of the Southwest is a situation where any tiny spark from a cigarette, from a chainsaw, from a car parked too close to high grass—any tiny spark is given up to possibly 100 percent probability of starting a fire. It's that dry. And that's an effect of climate change. I'd like to bring in Jeff Masters and ask, Jeff Masters, can you explain what you think accounts for the record heat and violent storms that we're now witnessing? You've got two things to think about here. One is the fact that the atmosphere has natural ups and downs. And this year happens to be one of those years when we're getting, say, a one-in-20-year type of heatwave, which, you know, happen about once every 20 years. But on top of that, you've got this background pattern of global warming. So now you've increased the odds of getting these one-in-20-type-year heatwaves, and the expectation is, by the end of the century, this kind of heatwave is going to occur once every two years. So, no surprise here: a warming climate, you have a higher probability of getting hot summers like we're seeing this year. We're going to go to break, then come back to this discussion. I'll play a clip of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who was at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, and we had a chance to interview him. And we'll discuss what's happening not only in the United States, but around the world, as we put together the two words "extreme weather" with another two: "climate change," "climate disruption," "global warming." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute. [break] As we talk about climate change today, I want to play a comment from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. I interviewed him in 2009. He was actually the mayor of Denver at the time, and he was attending the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen. MAYOR JOHN HICKENLOOPER: The whole question about extreme climate change as being the direct result of greenhouse gases, the argument that continually gets put back is, look at the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression, right? And that was before we had anywhere like these types of CO2 buildup. How do you tell which dramatic climate changes are the result of CO2 emissions and greenhouse gases and which ones aren't? And that's—you know, that level of scientific application is still—I mean, I think most people agree that the modeling is—again, it's hard work. There's a lot of noise on it. I think the—I think what the real key is, we know that climate change is occurring. Alright, everyone knows that. We know it's dramatic. We know that mankind is the likely—the vast majority of it is a result of our actions. So we need to address it and move quickly. That was Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. At the time, he was the mayor of Denver. He was in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. Jeff Masters, you're a meteorologist with Weather Underground, which was just bought by the Weather Channel, and that made me think of Dr. Heidi Cullen, who got tremendous fire as a meteorologist at Weather Channel when she said meteorologists—something like—shouldn't be certified unless they know about climate change. Can you talk about the significance of what Hickenlooper is saying? Now the governor of Colorado, we're hearing him everywhere, but journalists are not asking him about global warming, though they are of course asking him to talk about the fires. Yes, it's difficult to talk about whether a specific event is tied to global warming or not without doing a detailed study, which takes many months, typically, with a computer model to see just exactly what the influences might be. But we do know that if you've got a warming climate, this sort of extreme heat event that we're having is more likely. But we don't know back in the 1930s exactly what was going on. That was a very interesting time, because, yes, a lot of that heat that we experienced then was due to natural causes, but it was also due to the fact that we basically turned the Midwest into a giant kind of parking lot for generating extreme heat through very poor farming practices. So a component of that heatwave was not natural. And this past June's weather was the most extreme since the Dust Bowl era, as far as June temperatures go and extreme records. So, we're back towards what we saw back in the '30s, and that should give us all some concern that we're getting Dust Bowl-type weather, which is very devastating for the American economy. Suzanne Goldenberg, I want to turn to the work of the Heartland Institute, which you've written about, especially about the recent exposé on their work. Can you explain who they are, what they have to do with climate denial, climate science deniers, and what this exposé revealed? Well, the Heartland Institute is an organization that's been based in Chicago and has been in operation for about 25 years. And they're an extreme, ultra-conservative, libertarian think tank. And over the last number of years, they made it among their missions to discredit the science of climate change, in many ways, and they sort of set themselves up to be a hub for people who didn't believe that climate change was man-made. They began having annual conferences. They put forward a bunch of so-called "experts" who claim to be scientists, who did not believe with mainstream science that the climate was changing and that human activity, specifically industrial activity, was having a part in it. And so, what they were doing, on a broader scale—where they fit in is that their mission really was to create doubt about the fact that climate change was occurring. And when there's doubt, then it's very hard to put policy in place. So, they were one of a number of groups doing this, but they were among the most prominent, and they had previously had links to ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, as well as a number of mainstream corporations. Now, in February last year, the water—February this year, excuse me, the water scientist Peter Gleick obtained—through deception, he basically pretended to be a member of the board of Heartland, and he obtained a number of confidential documents that were prepared for a board meeting. And these documents really shone more of a light on the inner workings of Heartland. They were important for two reasons. One, they contained a donors list, so we got to know who exactly was giving money to this organization. That was something they had never disclosed. And there were some surprises in that list, because there were some mainstream corporations there like General Motors Foundation, which has a corporate policy of believing in climate change and of having sustainable business practices. The second thing it revealed that I think was interesting was their project to discredit climate change was really laid bare. And among those activities that they were engaged in was a project they wanted to set up that would specifically target children, schoolchildren from kindergarten age, and basically indoctrinate these children so that they did not believe in the science they were being taught in schools. And those were the two most striking things that came out of that exposé. And what happened as a result, once this exposé was revealed? What happened as a result to the Heartland Institute? Well, basically the organization is imploding. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of backlash against Peter Gleick. People have questioned whether that was an appropriate thing for a scientist to be doing. But, really, Heartland has been done a lot of damage. Once exposed, a lot of their mainstream donors decided they didn't want to fund that organization anymore. And Heartland actually compounded the damage, because they adopted a very combative approach. They took out a billboard comparing people who believe in climate change to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and that just started a whole new flight of other donors. So, really, they've put themselves beyond the pale. They've made themselves seem a very extreme right-wing organization, where before they had adopted this posture of being sort of skeptical, probing the science, trying to get the most rational policy. All that posture is just gone now. They've been exposed for being an extremely conservative organization. A TV meteorologist who's been criticized for failing to connect extreme weather patterns to global warming has been CNN's Rob Marciano. I want to play a 2007 CNN report covering a story about a British judge who was considering banning Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, from schools in England. Schools may have to issue a warning before they show students the controversial movie about global warming. Oh, there are definitely some inaccuracies. And, you know, the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films, as well. Well, the biggest thing I have a problem with is his implication that Katrina was caused by global warming. And there's a number of studies that have been out, and there—really, the jury is still out. Global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we've seen. That's Rob Marciano, news and weather anchor for CNN Worldwide. Jeff Masters, your response? You're a meteorologist with Weather Underground. ...polarizing figure. He's a politician. But he did write a good book, and he did make a good movie with a lot of excellent science on climate change. Was it perfect? No, there were some inaccuracies in it. Should it be shown in schools? I think that individual schools have to make that own decision. But we do have a lot of resources out there by people who aren't politicians, on climate change and climate science. We certainly should be bringing those more to people's attention. Well, what about this issue that across the TV networks there is more and more attention devoted to weather, as it should be—I mean, 2,000 records broken just in the last month, it's astounding, and every day a record is broken after the day before the record was broken—but that there is no discussion of climate change by these meteorologists? I think it's important for the public to hear that what we're seeing now is the future. We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heatwaves, fires and storms. And we better prepare for it. We better educate people what's going on, give the best science that's out there on what climate change is doing and where it's likely to head. I think we're missing a big opportunity here—or our TV meteorologists are—to educate and tell the population what is likely to happen. This is just the beginning, this kind of summer weather we're having. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-3-2012?start=1883 The past two weeks have witnessed the worst forest fires in Colorado history, a deadly Mid-Atlantic storm, and a record-shattering heatwave on the East Coast. Democracy Now! discusses how these extreme events fit into the model of changing weather patterns long predicted by climate change scientists. And delegates from 190 countries have gathered at the United Nations to begin talks on the first-ever global agreement regulating the arms trade. Plus headlines, and more.<br /><br /> Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:25:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-july-3-2012 Climate change, Extreme weather, Wildfire, Heat wave, United States, Tropical cyclone, Iraq, Arms Trade Treaty, Colorado, Arms industry As we discuss the spate of extreme weather in the United States, the author and professor Christian Parenti argues that the Republican-led assault on the public sector will leave states more vulnerable to global warming's effects. "Another thing that's missing from these discussions is not just the words 'climate change,' but the words 'public sector,'" Parenti says. "I mean, who's out there fighting these fires? It's the public sector, you know? Where do people go when there are these cooling centers? It's the public sector. ... This assault on the public sector must be linked to climate change." We're also joined by The Guardian's U.S. environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg and by Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website. I want to bring in Christian Parenti into the conversation. He's the author of Tropic of Chaos, most recently. You've talked a lot about the effects of global warming and climate change in the rest of the world, especially in the Global South. One of the arguments made for why in the U.S. there is so much climate science denial is that populations here are relatively isolated from its worst effects. But as we see more and more extreme weather events like we've witnessed, how likely do you think that that is to continue, because more and more people are, of course, being affected? Well, I don't know whether people's minds are going to change if there's this continual barrage of disinformation, but it's becoming a reality in everyday life, undeniably. And I think what it does is it calls to question the role of government. And the real difference between the Global South and the North in facing this problem is that, in the Global South, government—the public sector—has been systematically dismantled, on the orders of the IMF and the World Bank through structural adjustment programs, state assets and state—have been privatized, and state capacity has been diminished. And so, people fall back, in the face of extreme weather, on their own devices, which in places like Kenya and Afghanistan are cheap AK-47s and raiding your neighbor's cattle or turning to the drug trade. But in this country, there is still, despite a generation-long assault on the public sector and on government, which is picking up pace now, as we all know—there still is a public sector. And at these moments, another thing that's missing from these discussions is not just the word "climate change," but the words "public sector." I mean, who's out there fighting these fires? It's the public sector, you know? Where do people go when there are these cooling centers? It's the public sector. It's public schools, which are currently being privatized in Philadelphia. This assault on the public sector must be linked to climate change. So, in the face of extreme weather, I think that there really is—you know, we have to embrace the fact that U.S. capitalism is essentially a mixed economy already. We have 35 percent of the GDP is government activity. This is a right-wing talking point. Many on the left don't even discuss it, but that's a tool we can use. Vermont is a perfect example of this. Yes. And last year we had Hurricane Irene dumped a lot rain on Vermont. And people came together on a voluntary basis, communities, but also the state government was there with lots of aid, levels of aid that far outstrip the great generosity of Vermont businesses by, you know, factors of three, four, five. And in these moments, we have to recognize that we are all connected and that one of the most important institutions for managing these types of crises is the public sector and that we cannot fire public workers, we cannot dismantle the state, and that it is clearly not always efficient and—inefficient and corrupt. It actually does lots and lots of valuable things. And, you know, I'll bet you what's going to happen later in the summer is that FEMA is going to come under attack again. That's what happened at the end of last summer, right? The right wing turned on FEMA. They said they were spending too much. Well, they're spending too much because disasters have, you know, gone—they've doubled. The number of declared disasters have doubled in the last 20 years, like 99 last year. So, the GOP is trying to strip FEMA's budget. Why do they hate FEMA so much? If you actually look into what FEMA does, it makes perfect sense why the right hates FEMA. Same reason they hate Social Security. Because it works. Because it's a public agency that helps redistribute wealth to people in need. And it does all sorts of things that are essential to the people who are affected by disasters and to the regional economies that need to recover. Is the difference also in the United States the level of power exerted by the oil companies, the wealthiest in the world—I mean, in terms of advertisements and the corporate media, etc.? I wanted to bring up a tweet of Bill McKibben. This is on the issue of the topic of fossil fuel subsidies at the Rio+20 summit. Bill McKibben tweeted, "Proposal: Each time we set a new temp record, deduct 1% from Exxon's subsidy payments. 2000 new records last month, let's see, that's..." Christian Parenti? Yeah, I mean, we should obviously reduce all those subsidies, and we should allow the EPA to do what it is mandated to do, which is impose a de facto carbon tax. With the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed by Clinton in the mid-'90s and then not ratified by the Senate, states and green organizations sued, saying the EPA should be regulating greenhouse gases. They won that suit. It was just reaffirmed again recently. What that means is that the EPA is responsible for issuing rules that would raise the cost of burning fossil fuels. If that happens, there will be a massive shift of investment away from these now dirty and subsidized industries towards clean industries. These laws exist. This needs to happen. The government, as being one-third or more of the economy, could lead the way by saying, "OK, all of our new vehicles are going to be electric. We're going to set out a schedule for buying clean power for all of our buildings." The federal government is the largest single consumer of power in the economy. So, you know, also, the private sector—you know, profits have really recovered in this economy. The private sector is sitting on more uninvested cash, corporate America is. And this is—I'm not talking about profits paid out or bonuses, I'm talking about money they're sitting on in the form of short-term Treasury bonds. They're waiting for cues. "Where do we invest?" If the government allowed the EPA to do what it must do—raise the price of burning fossil fuels—that would help direct private money into renewable energy. It would help put people back to work. So, you know, there's—in the face of this crisis, we have to really think seriously and maturely and creatively about the role of government. Just one other fact about this disaster stuff: you know, the only place you can get flood insurance is basically the federal government. It writes 95 percent of flood insurance. This is never discussed. This is—what underwrites the recovery of so many flood-hit communities is the public sector. What about climate change globally? Give us—paint us the picture and what it means. You started to talk about that. Well, you know, it's kicking in all over the world. I was just in Vietnam. They take it very seriously there. There, there's no—I mean, denial of climate change doesn't even occur. There, the debate is, do we protect the Mekong Delta, which is the heart of the Vietnamese economy—Vietnam was, for the last 10 years, the world's top rice exporter. That all comes from the Mekong Delta. The debate there is, do we put dikes on the edge of the Mekong Delta, or do we retreat one kilometer in to help the mangroves retreat? So they're having a very sophisticated discussion. And what it means is that, you know, people do not have institutions like FEMA to fall back on. And so, poor farmers get hit, they lose their land, they migrate to the cities. In places like, you know, other places with violence going on, people fall into sort of, you know, drug economies in cities or rural raiding, or they are attracted to millenarian religious and ethnic fanaticism, and these become the solutions, and they pick up the gun. And that's what Topic of Chaos is all about, looking at how climate change plays out through political institutions and then shows up as violence. And this often happens in very attenuated ways. So you had the Arab Spring, to some extent, which is many, many positive aspects of this, but it is also associated with three wars, you know: Libya, Syria, Yemen. Part of what triggered that was, I think, climate change in grain-producing areas. The U.S. and Canada hit by floods. Australia, drought. drought in Russia—Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which caused Russia to ban its wheat exports in 2010. Single-largest grain wheat importer in the world? Egypt. Food prices were running at over 20 percent inflation a year at that—from 2010 to 2011, when the Arab Spring kicked off. And if you go back and look, the first demands were all about the rising cost of living, with food being at the center of it. And that, to some extent, was, you could say, the expression of climate change impacting agriculture in other places, showing up as suffering and political crisis and then violence in the Middle East. I want to ask Suzanne Goldenberg one of the points that Christian Parenti raised, which has to do with public sector cuts. Something you've spoken about in your reporting for The Guardian is the amount of funding cuts, congressional budget cuts to—for preventing and putting out wildfires. $500 million have been cut since 2010. That's almost 15 percent of the budget. Can you say a little about the significance of that and the impact it's had since these fires have broken out? Well, it's a huge impact. I mean, every prediction says that wildfires are going to be increasing over the next 10 years. And yet, we have a Congress that is—a Republican-controlled Congress in the House that is opposed to spending money on things that would protect people and/or on any kind of public project. So what you've got now is the Forest Service coming forward every year saying, "We need this money, not just to fight fires, but to take the kind of steps that are necessary to ensure that when fires do occur, that they won't be so devastating, that they won't burn for weeks and weeks, that they won't devour hundreds of thousands of acres of forest." You know, and those are programs where you've sort of managed the materials in the forest. You might thin out forests so there's not there a lot to burn. You might develop a space between the forest and people's houses, so those houses don't burn down like we've seen in Colorado Springs. So those programs, as well as the programs for putting out fires when they do occur, have both been cut this year. And that's going to have a pretty devastating effect. There's a lot of people very worried about that. Christian Parenti, you spoke about the effects of rising wheat prices and the effects it had on Egypt and the Arab Spring. One of the effects of the fires and the heatwave and the floods in the U.S. is likely to be a dramatic increase in the price of corn, wheat, again, and soybean. What do you think some of the global consequences of the increase in these commodities will be? Well, it will—it will probably be compounded by speculation, that in situations like this, organizations—companies like Glencore get on top of it, and they increase the price even further through speculation. Explain what that company is, I mean, what they do. It's the second largest commodity trading company in the world after Cargill, and they're involved in mining and buying and selling agricultural commodities like wheat and soy. So, what that will mean in the Global South is that people, such as Egyptians, who pay 40 percent of—the average Egyptian pays 40 percent of their wages in food, they're going to be pressed to the wall. And so, we're going to see, as we saw in 2008 and to some extent in last year, probably more food riots, more protests. And at first it won't look like it's about climate change. You know, it'll be about some kleptocratic president. It'll be, you know, Christians and Muslims fighting each other in northern Nigeria. And it's not to say that these conflicts are reducible to climate change, but they are exacerbated by climate change. And the frightening thing is that one of the only institutions in the U.S. that seems to think about this is the Pentagon. And they don't—you know, their job is to fight wars and prepare for wars. So they see this coming, and they are preparing for open-ended counterinsurgency on a global scale indefinitely. To their credit, they also say, you know, ultimately, we can't handle this. If there is an appropriate policy from civilian leaders, who knows how civilization will cope with the next century and climate change kicking in very readily? But right now, the preparations are for policing this crisis. And that's not going to help at all. That's going to exacerbate it. I wanted to go to Jeff Masters at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, climatologist with—a meteorologist with Weather Underground. Can you predict for us what's going to happen this summer? And also, just sticking with this issue, since the way people understand the world is so often through the media—their own experience going outside experiencing the extreme weather, but then watching on television—is there discussion among climatologists to start raising this issue? Is there a push of underground weathermen to talk about this? Right now, we've got moderate to severe to extreme drought over a large portion of the grain-producing area of the U.S., from Kansas into Missouri, Illinois, Indiana. And it's only the early part of July. The forecast is for continued very hot weather at least for the next two weeks. And the way things are going, it wouldn't be any surprise to me to see a sharp reduction in the American grain harvest because of drought this year. We're looking at a situation similar to 1988, which was a $70 billion disaster in the U.S. because of the drought. Or, if you look back in the 1930s, this weather reminds me a lot of what we saw in some of those Dust Bowl years. So, a big concern. Drought, going forward, is going to be a huge issue in the U.S., and it is going to impact food prices, I think. As far as your second question, can you ask that again? I'm not sure I caught quite the gist of what you were asking. Is there a discussion among meteorologists—is there a discussion among meteorologists to start talking about climate change? It's been an ongoing discussion for a long time, sure. I mean, I'm on the board of advisers for a couple of groups that talk about climate change, and we're certainly trying to get the word out. And we've got a lot of people out there giving talks at the local level. And we're trying to get, of course, as much media exposure as we can. So, it's a big uphill struggle, though, because there's a lot of disinformation being put out there by companies whose profits are hurt by climate change awareness. So, it remains to be seen. I think, well, the weather we're seeing now is probably ultimately what's going to change people's minds, when they see in their own experience that, hey, you know, we're seeing unprecedented sorts of heat and drought and maybe extreme, violent storms, too. That's probably what's going to eventually turn the tide. Is that oil company pressure in the corporate media, for example, the advertisers? Well, yeah, absolutely. The oil companies have to protect profits by law, so of course they're going to challenge any science which says that there's global warming. And do TV climatologists feel that direct pressure, being told, "Don't raise these issues. You know, stick to the temperature, stick to the records and the record breaking, but don't talk about what's behind it all"? Yeah, it depends on the particular meteorologist and particular station, but, yeah, of course, I mean, there's a lot of pressure. You get a lot of blowback when you start talking about these issues. You get a lot of angry people writing you. Sometimes it may be an astroturf-type issue, where there is paid people out there that are writing letters and, you know, putting pressure on people not to talk about climate change. But there is also a lot of genuine confusion among people, and a lot of people feel very passionately that climate change is not an issue. And they're being swayed by some of these very powerful media campaigns being waged by the oil companies. Well, I want to thank you all for being with us, Jeff Masters, the—who is with us—Jeff Masters, who is with Weather Underground; Suzanne Goldenberg U.S. environment correspondent of The Guardian, just came back from reporting on the forest fires in Colorado. Thanks so much to Christian Parenti. His latest book is just coming out in paperback this next week, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-27-2012?start=3083 With extreme weather fueling wildfires in Colorado and record rainfall in Florida, the Obama administration moved closer to approving construction of the southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalist Bill McKibben discusses developments. Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:03:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-27-2012 Campaign finance, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Politics of the United States, Supreme Court of the United States, United States, Climate change, Citizens United, Keystone Pipeline, Montana, Clean Air Act With extreme weather fueling wildfires in Colorado and record rainfall in Florida, the Obama administration has moved closer to approving construction of the southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline. We're joined by environmentalist, educator and author Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org. "Today is one of those days when you understand what the early parts of the global warming era are going to look like," McKibben says. "For the first time in history, we managed to get the fourth tropical storm of the year before July. ... These are the most destructive fires in Colorado history, and they come after the warmest weather ever recorded there. ... This is what it looks like as the planet begins — and I underline 'begins' — to warm. Nothing that happened [at the United Nations Rio+20 summit] will even begin to slow down that trajectory." And we end today's show looking at corporate money in the environment, as Florida is lashed by drenching rains and the worst wildfires in Colorado's history continue to rage. We're joined by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, author of the book Eaarth. He's just back from the Rio+20 summit in Brazil, where oil and gas giants successfully lobbied to continue subsidies for their multi-billion-dollar business. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the Obama administration has granted permission for part of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil to refineries in the Gulf Coast. Bill, from Rio to the XL to the wildfires of Colorado, hold forth. Well, look, today is one of those days when you understand what the early parts of the global warming era are going to look like. We've got the first—for the first time in history, we managed to get the fourth tropical storm of the year before July. Debby is dropping absolutely record amounts of rain across much of Florida. The total may top two feet. Meanwhile, in Colorado, they've evacuated not only parts of the Air Force Academy, they just evacuated—and this is truly ironic—the headquarters of the National Center for Atmospheric Research outside Boulder, or at least part of it, because that's the place where the most important climate science in the world is going on. These are the most destructive fires in Colorado history, and they come after the warmest weather ever recorded there. You could do the same exercise all over the planet today. This is what it looks like as the planet begins — and I underline "begins" — to warm. And nothing that happened in Rio will even begin to slow down that trajectory. Rio was a failure. Young people did the only thing of interest there almost: they walked out of the conference, turned in their credentials with a day to go. I was proud to go with them, because, clearly, the thing had turned into a sham. The best proof of that probably, as you say, is the fact that even—even this most obvious of measures—ending the subsidies, the almost trillion dollars a year that the world pays to the fossil fuel industry—even that wasn't really on the table. We had a Twitter storm a week ago today all over the world. The number one trending topic on Twitter wasn't, you know, Justin Bieber's birthday or something like that, it was "end fossil fuel subsidies," people around the planet beginning to get really exercised. And yet, the Rio conference ended without any agreement on whether that might happen or when or how. Look, Amy, the absolute command of the fossil fuel industry over most of our political system is really evident. It's really evident when the president, who, under great pressure and with some courage blocked the northern part of the Keystone pipeline, yesterday with great fanfare said that he was approving the second southern half, the part that's in the U.S. Now, this doesn't connect up to the tar sands, so it probably isn't the same blow in terms of climate change, but it's sure a blow to people across Texas where that pipeline is going. If you go TarSandsBlockade.org, you'll see how we're going to try and fight back. There are brave people down there putting their bodies on the line, or soon will be, up against that tide of fossil fuel money. But this is going to be an awfully hard fight, 'til we build the movement strong enough to really, really counterbalance that weight of fossil fuel money. Bill, you say it doesn't hook up to tar sands, but isn't that the eventual goal? This is just the southern leg. That's definitely the eventual goal. That's what the—that's what all—that's what the Koch brothers and every other tar sands billionaire wants to do. For the moment, that's still under review, and the president has promised that it will finally get a serious review. We don't know how serious. The State Department has put out their initial guidelines for their next review last week, and they didn't even mention climate change. One's beginning to wonder whether the State Department isn't really a very weak link in any effort to deal with climate change. Secretary of State Clinton has unfortunately failed not only at Rio, but at Copenhagen, in terms of climate change diplomacy. And since it's the State Department that will review this pipeline crossing over from Canada, it will probably be our best chance to figure out whether they take global warming seriously at all. They should. It's clearly the great national security, diplomacy issue of the time ahead. We'll find out. And we'll keep fighting, not only on Keystone, but on these fossil fuel subsidies. At 350.org, we've got this remarkable electronic scoreboard that just went up that allows people all over the country to nail down their senators and congressmen on whether they think we should keep giving money every year to the fossil fuel industry. Senator Sanders, my senator here in Vermont, has introduced a bill along with Keith Ellison of Minnesota that would strip $113 billion in fossil fuel subsidies over the next decade. Even if—even if these guys weren't destroying the planet with this money, it's obnoxious that we're giving the richest industry on earth an endless taxpayer-funded gift, especially since there's nothing left to subsidize. For better and for worse, we've known how to burn coal and oil for a couple of hundred years. There's no point in underwriting it; we know how to do it. Bill McKibben, I want to ask you about our top headline today. A federal appeals court has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from the country's largest polluters. Also, the three-judge panel upheld the Obama administration's inaugural car and fuel economy standards, which aim to cut new car pollution in half and double fuel efficiency by 2025. Your response? We only have about 30 seconds. Those things are promising. Let's hope the Supreme Court doesn't get in the way. No wagers on that. But these are very long-term steps. The key steps right now are to keep that oil and coal in the ground, not to open the Arctic to drilling, not to build new coal ports on the West Coast, not to hook up that pipeline to the tar sands. Now, of course, in an election year, a lot of people hear you say "not, not, not," and they're concerned that this means that we will not have jobs. Well, the good news is that we're really figuring out how to do green technology. If you want a—if you want a real success story, last month, Germany—northern latitude country—managed one day to generate more than half the electricity it consumed from solar panels within its borders. There's no longer a technical problem to the job-rich transition to green energy. The problem is political, and it's tied up in the money that you've been talking about [inaudible]— Bill McKibben, we're going to leave it there. I thank you for being with us, founder of 350.org. His latest book is called Eaarth. http://news.linktv.org/videos/philippines-in-shock-as-flood-death-toll-climbs-to-1000?start=0 A state of national disaster has been declared in the Philippines. Flash floods triggered by Tropical Storm Washi have killed almost 1,000 people, and the local government is preparing temporary communal tombs to house many of the bodies. Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:27:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/philippines-in-shock-as-flood-death-toll-climbs-to-1000 Iligan, Philippines, Flash flood, Natural disaster, State of emergency, Mindanao, Tropical cyclone, Tropical Storm Washi (2011), Flood, Rain A state of national disaster has been declared in the Philippines. Flash floods triggered by Tropical Storm Washi have killed almost one thousand people, and the local government is preparing temporary communal tombs to house many of the bodies. Tens of thousands of people are also homeless, relying on the volunteers who have flocked to the worst affected areas - bringing food, water and support. Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas reports from Iligan in southern Philippines. http://news.linktv.org/videos/hundreds-killed-as-philippines-storm-triggers-deadly-floods?start=0 Hundreds have been killed in widespread flooding in the southern Philippines, as tropical storm Washi raked across the region, the Philippine Red Cross said. Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:25:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/hundreds-killed-as-philippines-storm-triggers-deadly-floods Mindanao, Philippines, Cagayan de Oro, Tropical Storm Washi (2011), Iligan, Tropical cyclone, Flash flood, Natural disaster, Storm damage, Philippine National Red Cross At least 436 people have been killed in widespread flooding in the southern Philippines, as tropical storm Washi raked across the region, the Philippine Red Cross said. The Red Cross, told the Associated Press on Saturday that the death toll had reached 436 across three cities. He said thousands of people had sought shelter in evacuation centres in the area. Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas reports from Manila. ---- Rescuers searched for more than 450 people still missing in the southern Philippines on Sunday after flash floods and landslides swept houses into rivers and out to sea, killing more than 500 people in areas ill-prepared to cope with deadly storms. Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan cities on Mindanao island were worst hit when Typhoon Washi slammed ashore while people slept late on Friday and early Saturday, sending torrents of water and mud through villages and stripping mountainsides bare http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-irene-pummels-bahamas-leaving-damage?start=0 The large and powerful Hurricane Irene roared across the Bahamas archipelago on Wednesday, pummeling the country's smaller, less-populated islands while posing less of a threat to the capital, a major tourist destination with 200,000 residents. Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:48:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/raw-video-irene-pummels-bahamas-leaving-damage The Bahamas, Hurricane Irene, Hurricane, Tropical cyclone, Storm damage, Severe weather, Rain, Environment, Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale, Associated Press The large and powerful Hurricane Irene roared across the Bahamas archipelago on Wednesday, pummeling the country's smaller, less-populated islands while posing less of a threat to the capital, a major tourist destination with 200,000 residents. http://news.linktv.org/videos/hurricane-irene-batters-caribbean-heads-toward-us?start=0 Hundreds of people took to emergency shelters as Irene passed Puerto Rico yesterday. Forecasters say the category 2 hurricane could be the first to hit the United States since Ike ripped along the Texas coast in 2008. Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:49:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/hurricane-irene-batters-caribbean-heads-toward-us Hurricane Irene, Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Hurricane, Tropical cyclone, Severe weather, Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale, Hurricane Ike, United States Hurricane Irene looks set to be the first hurricane to hit the United States since Ike ripped along the Texas coast in 2008. In the Caribbean Sea, authorities on the island of Puerto Rico said hundreds of people took to emergency shelters for safety while Irene passed. It strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane (on a five-step scale) as it swept north of the Dominican Republic. The storm season in this part of the Atlantic has been busy, with Irene the ninth to be named, in a very costly year for natural disasters.