Reuters Covers Sea Level Rise Flooding Miami, But Won't Say Climate Change

Miami families chalk 6' sea level rise at
HighWaterLine.org event (Jayme Gershen)

Reuters has a compelling story on how sea level rise is impacting Miami Beach, but even more interesting is what the story leaves out: Climate change. And there's evidence to suggest Reuters' omission is no accident.

First, the Reuters coverage of the Miami Beach "King Tide" that's expected to peak October 9 at about a foot above normal:

The event, caused by the alignment of the sun, moon and Earth, provides a taste of the potential impact of a longer-term two-foot sea level rise predicted for south Florida by 2060, according to the United States Geological Survey. The low-lying greater Miami area, with a population of 5.7 million, is one of the world's most at-risk urban communities, scientists told a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in April.

The King Tide is expected to rise to almost four feet. With seven miles of coastline, Miami Beach is already seeing more frequent salt-water street flooding at high tide, according to Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales.

To combat such widespread flooding, the city has set aside $300 million to 400 million to install up to 50 pumps in the coming years in what some say is a vain effort to protect an estimated $23 billion of real estate.

Bigger sea walls are not an option as Miami Beach's flooding is caused largely by water rising underfoot through porous limestone bedrock. Officials concede pumping water back into the ocean is only a short-term solution.

It's a really interesting article, but it leaves you with an unanswered question: Why is sea level rising? It's a critical part of the story. Leaving out the cause makes sea level rise seem like something that's beyond our control, but it most certainly is not. The intensity of future global warming and the height of future sea level rise will be determined by how much and how fast we cut industrial carbon pollution right now.

You might think it's a coincidence that Reuters left out any mention of global warming - maybe they just assumed everyone knows and accepts mainstream climate science! But there's evidence the action is deliberate. As Media Matters has reported, a former reporter accuses Reuters Deputy Editor-in-Chief Paul Ingrassia of denying the clear scientific connection between industrial carbon pollution and global warming intensity. The reporter accused Ingrassia of letting his personal politics taint Reuters' climate coverage and repeated Media Matters investigations have shown Reuters climate coverage continues to decline in frequency and quality.

Reuters' silence on the connection between sea level rise and carbon pollution comes with real consequences, especially in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott wouldn't even let climate scientists finish making their case for climate action before cutting them off. Sen. Marco Rubio lets his pro-polluter politics cloud his judgment on climate change.

In this case, Reuters isn't just failing to connect the dots for its readers - it's letting science deniers off the hook for their reckless decision to put politics ahead of people.

Via ClimateCrocks.com

Green Monster: Red Sox Cash In With Car-Focused Spring Training Park

Remember how the otherwise-green-conscious Red Sox moved to a new spring training facility called JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, FL that virtually forces you to drive there? Turns out there's plenty of green motivation behind the lack of transit and bike parking - the cash kind:

Fort Myers’ coffers retained parking fees collected from Red Sox games under the terms of the city’s 1991 contract.

Today, the teams keep all the money generated from game day parking, tickets sales, concessions and advertising, while the county pays for expansions that increased the teams’ ability to sell those items.

As the article details, Lee County is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in ballpark costs while the Red Sox and nearby Twins owe only a small fraction of that in lease payments - and that doesn't cover the cost for road expansion & maintenance to bring all those cars to JetBlue Park.

But even with the driving mandate and JetBlue Park's total lack of solar energy despite the park's Sunshine State location, the Red Sox still got a baseline LEED green building certification, because the U.S. Green Building Council apparently is now giving them away to anyone who recycles.

Rush Limbaugh: Hurricane Isaac a Liberal Plot to Disrupt GOP Convention

Rush Limbaugh long ago untethered himself from reality (the oxycontin may have something to do with it), but this is a new level of crazy even for him:

Rush Limbaugh is even blaming Obama for the weather. On his radio show, Limbaugh claimed that Hurricane Issac is an Obama conspiracy to shut down the Republican convention: "The National Hurricane Center, which is a government agency, is very hopeful that the hurricane gets near Tampa. The National Hurricane Center is Obama." [...]

If the Republican Party wanted to avoid any potential weather problems, they could have made the decision not to hold their convention in South Florida at the peak of hurricane season. Seriously, who in the Republican Party thought it would be a great idea to hold their convention in South Florida in late August?

My favorite part of Limbaugh's rant:

We don’t need the National Hurricane Center, and we don’t need all these weather dolts analyzing this for us. Well, we need the center, we can look at their charts and graphs, we know what to do, we can read the stuff. 

We don't need Big Government telling us when a hurricane is coming! OK, yes, we completely do.

Audio courtesy Media Matters:

Crazy Train Wreck? Solyndra-Obsessed Stearns Losing Primary

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) is one of Congress' craziest members, a birther who's led the GOP's witch hunt on clean energy investments and called for women who have abortions to be thrown in prison. But after last night's primary, it looks like he'll be going from crazy Congressman to crazy private citizen - he's narrowly losing his Republican primary to a local veterinarian named Ted Yoho.

This is usually where I'd copy & paste some trenchant news analysis, but ... no one seems to know quite why Stearns is down by about 800 votes. Even the local Gainesville Sun seems to have no idea what happened, other than to speculate Yoho's attacks on Stearns as a corrupt career politician may have worked. But while politicos like to espouse Unified Theories that prove they're Savvy Insiders, it could simply be that in a multiple-candidate, low-turnout primary in the dog days of August, anything can happen.

Yoho is being called a Tea Party candidate, but it's hard to imagine he could get much further right than Stearns, rated more conservative than GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan by the National Journal & called one of Congress' conservative leaders by the American Conservative Union. If you're a sitting Republican member of Congress, you could look at Stearns' likely loss one of two ways: How crazy do you have to be for Tea Party if Stearns may not have been crazy enough? Or, if even Stearns' craziness didn't satisfy the Tea Party, maybe Republicans are better off just doing what they think is right & playing to the middle?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) had stood by Stearns through all of his nuttiness. Heckuva job, Eric.

Red Sox Get Bigger Footprint: Sprawling Spring Park Skimps on Green

Given that Fenway Park is a green diamond, I was surprised to find on a recent trip to Florida that the new Boston Red Sox spring training facility, is the least-environmentally conscious new sports venue I've visited in recent years. And if they couldn't get JetBlue Park's green right, is it any wonder they also screwed up the height of its Green Monster?

"Environmentally-sustainable features will be incorporated throughout the facility and Complex, and the considerable landscaping will feature vegetation indigenous to the area," reads the JetBlue Park website. It's hard to tell exactly what that means, or whether more ambitious environmental efforts will be undertaken down the road. But how do you build a new ballpark with no solar panels in Florida, one of the states most threatened by global warming?

JetBlue Park's meager positive environmental measures are more than offset by its sprawling location. While its predecessor, City of Palms Stadium, was located in the center of the city, JetBlue Park is 10 miles outside central Fort Myers. That meant the vast majority of fans had to drive and most of them came came off the same exit of I-75, backing up traffic for miles. Even if the stadium was powered with 100% renewable energy, its carbon footprint would still be high because it asks 12,000 fans each game to drive so far outside the city.

And the fans who did take advantage of the ideal biking weather in Florida in March didn't get an ideal reception:

For the grand opening of jetBlue Park, 300 people biked to the new stadium. Those cyclists saved about 2-3 acres of parking. When asked, 76-percent of the bicyclists said they wanted to bike to future games. But jetBlue Park only has permanent bike racks for 50 bikes, with some temporary French barricades on standby.

Given the messed-up Monster, bad traffic and brutally long lines at concession stands, I didn't find the dearth of environmental amenities surprising. I've come to think of a venue's lack of green features as Van Halen viewed brown M&Ms - a warning sign that someone's just going through the motions. Poor environmental planning often goes hand in hand with a poorly thought-out overall customer experience.

Did Climate Action Deliver Florida for McCain?

UPDATE (Wed. 10:30am): Two hours after I originally posted this to DailyKos, Grist miraculously drew the same conclusions. What are the odds? :)

McCain leads in Florida.

McCain supports climate action.

Thompson drops out.

Romney picks up Thompson's supporters, who deny global warming even exists.

Romney takes lead in polls.

Romney attacks McCain for supporting climate action.

Climate action mack daddy Gov. Charlie Crist endorses McCain.

McCain regains lead in Florida polls.

McCain wins Florida.

Coincidence? I think not.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

The Green Miles Meets The Gray Manatee

I was down in Miami this weekend for the National Wildlife Federation-sponsored Carbon Neutral Sailfish Tournament. We were hanging out on the docks while crews from CNN and CBS interviewed tournament organizers, when a manatee popped up right under our feet ...



I think the "sea cow" comparison isn't fair to cows -- it underestimates just how lethargic the manatees are. I've seen cows hustle when they're spooked, but I can't imaging the manatee rushing for anything. That's one big reason they're so vulnerable to boat motors (note the notch in the manatee's tail).

You can learn more about manatee conservation at the Save the Manatee Club!

Making the Best of an Ungreen Hotel

The Green Miles is in Miami this weekend for the National Wildlife Federation-sponsored Carbon-Neutral Sailfish Tournament. I'm staying at the Royal Palm South Beach. It's a decent hotel, but if it wasn't right on the beach it would be nothing to write home about.

One thing that makes the Royal Palm so ordinary - its lack of green features. They give you a newspaper every day whether you want it or not, but there's no recycling anywhere - it's not even accepted at the front desk. About the only positive I noticed was the compact fluorescent light bulbs.

One little thing I do when I'm staying by myself is to leave the "do not disturb" sign on the doorknob, letting the cleaning staff know that the room doesn't need service. Do I really need new soaps, shampoo, towels, sheets, etc. every single day? I'm fairly confident they can survive more than one use.

Keep an eye on the the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Green Lodging Program. While relatively few hotels have been approved so far, there's a long list of applicants. Once the list expands and there are more choices, it should be a lot easier to find a green hotel.

I Once Caught a Fish This Big

On my recent trip to Florida, I got to go deep sea fishing. I caught my first-ever fish, a barracuda:


No, I didn't eat it. Apparently barracuda aren't good eatin' (which I suppose is why you don't ever see Filet of Barracuda with Lemon Butter on the menu at your local restaurant). But they do recycle them, using them as bait for future fishing trips.

Why Should I Have to Choose Between Green and 'Bleu in Miami?

Sorry for the post drought but The Green Miles was in Miami for the Patriots-Dolphins game, the gridiron version of Ali-Patterson (Tom Brady coming back in for his 6th TD was the Pats' version of "What's my name, fool?").

While I was there, I caught a cool story on the local NPR station about how Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is using state's purchasing power to push hotels to go green:

Now the Four Seasons -- and Florida's 45 other certified green lodges -- stand to benefit from an increase in business thanks to Gov. Charlie Crist's recent mandate that state-sponsored meetings and conferences be held at FDEP-certified green hotels whenever possible, beginning Jan. 1.

Crist's order has sparked a race among hoteliers to complete their paperwork and earn certification from FDEP's green lodging program, which was created in 2004 as a pollution-prevention measure. The program is charged with helping the state's lodging facilities implement ways to conserve water, reduce waste, improve air quality and save energy.

I stayed at the Fontainebleu, which not only isn't FDEP-certified but doesn't have even a single green feature. Not that I didn't enjoy the gorgeous view and all the great amenities, but there's absolutely no reason you can't have gorgeous AND green (in fact, there's a whole website devoted to it). Steps like energy-efficient appliances and lighting, a re-use program for linens and towels, adjusted thermostats and eliminating the use of disposable products like water bottles should be imperceptible to guests. So why should I have to choose between green and (Fontaine)bleu? Why can't I have both?

Putting the "Conserve" Back in "Conservativism"

Last week I worried that the Florida Summit on Climate Change might be more hot air than real action. Turns out that action was clear and decisive:

The silver-haired governor of Florida stood arm-in-arm Friday with the silver-screen governor of California, joked about being recast in Twins, and then -- as the cameras rolled -- signed a groundbreaking set of environmental protection orders.

Gov. Charlie Crist described the mandates as a framework for a new, more future-friendly way of living and conducting business in Florida.

''State government is leading by example,'' he said. ``It is the right thing to do.''

It also is a popular thing to do. Symbolizing the new star power of environmentalism, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Crist at the signing ceremony after delivering a variation of his trademark line: "'We have to say `Hasta la vista, baby' to greenhouse gases.''

Among the components of Crist's plan, long on goals though short on specifics: Tough new pollution standards for automobiles; a strong regulatory push for solar and wind energy; state vehicles powered by biofuel -- all contributing to sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2017, with deeper cuts by 2025 and even more by 2050.

Word of the executive orders leaked out in the days leading up to the conference, so the summit's tone went from "what will Crist do" to "Crist has acted, now what will DC do?" Considering Republicans are stonewalling action in Congress and President Bush is threatening to veto every positive piece of energy/environment legislation that comes within 100 yards of his desk, it was really amazing to see two Republican governors taking the lead on state global warming action.

But as Gov. Schwarzenegger said, our best conservationist president was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican. Some how the "conserve" in "conservativism" got switched from preserving nature to preserving the profits of fossil fuel providers.

Is your member of Congress a cosponsor of legislation to fight global warming? Find out here!

Florida Governor's Climate Change Summit: Real Action or Hot Air?

It's Tuesday night at 7:27pm and I'm sitting in National Airport waiting for my 5:40pm flight, which has been delayed until 10pm. A laptop and wireless internet is making the wait bearable, but if they cancel this puppy at 9:30pm, I'm gonna be pissed.

I guess it could be worse. See the depressed-looking guy across from me? I overheard him say he'd been trapped in the laptop pen since 2pm. Ouch.

I'm heading down to Miami for Governor Charlie Crist's Summit on Climate Change. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will also be there, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Theodore Roosevelt IV.

Surprising that two Republican governors would get together for a climate change summit, huh? But Florida and California are two of the states most at risk to be impacted by global warming. Florida could be devastated by rising seas and stronger hurricanes, while California's already-bad problems with floods, droughts, and wildfires could get even worse.

Will Crist and Schwarzenegger commit to take concrete steps towards addressing global warming? I don't get the impression that they'd put on this whole summit before the eyes of the environmental world just to talk. I'll let you know how it goes!