The current issue of my local Gannett newspaper is filled with ominous front page headlines like: “Perilous Course – The Climate Future is Now”, and “Going Forth Without a Climate Crisis Plan?” The “Perilous Course” story, especially, is purported to be ” a collaborative examination of how people up and down the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis.” “Journalists” from 35 USA Today/Gannett newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida are speaking with regular people about real-life impacts, “digging into the science”, and investigating government response, or lack of it.

In many cases, the writers detail the plights of people who have been displaced by flooding or natural disasters over the last 10-20 years, all attributed to climate change, with ominous warnings, like: “In the Chesapeake Bay region alone, 80,000 acres of forest have been turned into salt marsh in the last 150 years”. 80,000 acres sounds like a lot – it is 125 square miles. The Chesapeake Bay watershed encompasses 64,000 square miles. So, is 125 square miles, or 0.2 % of the watershed turning into salt marsh in 150 years really a crisis? Or, could it be simply part of a long-term ebb and flow of the environment? How about this: a professor of sociology at the Florida State University projects that 13.1 million people could relocate due to sea-level rise alone by 2100. Wow, again, 13.1 million sounds like a lot, and it is. But the man is saying that 13.1 million people, or 3.2 percent of the US population, MIGHT have to move if nothing is done about a sea-level rise PROJECTION in the next 78 years. Is that really a crisis? I have lived on a shallow bay 4 miles from the Atlantic Ocean for the last nine years, and I have seen no appreciable rise in the level of the bay in that time. Perhaps it IS rising, but if it is, it is so slow as to be indiscernible over that period.

No Plans – the writers lament that most states on the East Coast do not have a unified plan or budget for combatting climate change. However, many have set carbon emission reduction goals to combat the effects of the evil fossil fuels: Massachusetts will meet net zero by 2050. North Carolina also mandates a 70% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 to 2030 and net zero by 2050. New Jersey and Pennsylvania. have set 80% reduction goals by 2050. I often wonder about such goals, because there seldom seems to be any concrete plan associated with reaching the goals, only reliance on emerging technologies. Is a thirty-year-out goal set to keep any politician or administration putting those “goals” from being held accountable way out there? Who will remember who did what?

How to Get There – How might we achieve these goals? Everyone is hanging their hat on wind and solar. Five wind turbines off Rhode Island’s Block Island are held up in the article as a bold move in the right direction. Completed after exhaustive engineering studies in 2016 at a cost of $300 MILLION dollars, the 5 turbines generate about 30 MW of power, probably enough to power about 17,000 homes. The problem is – the turbines have had many problems since initial operation and many tens of millions more have been spent to repair them. Tranmission cables were not buried deep enough (to save money), and stress cracks are already appearing in blades that were supposed to last many more years. All five turbines were shut down for a good part of 2021.

What about nuclear power? No mention of that anywhere in the articles I have read. It’s proven, safer than ever, and the greenest of green energies, the only emission being water vapor.

What about recognition that alternative technologies (wind, solar, battery technology for storage, transmission/grid issues)are not yet refined enough for helter-skelter abandonment of fossils fuels? We will be dependent on fossil fuels for many years to come, especially in developing nations, where it is by far the cheapest and most dependable of all alternatives. Do we simply turn our back on such nations and say sorry, we got ours?

Has any scientist or scientific group come forward with a tangible, practical explantion of the long term effects of the “climate crisis”, in terms the layman can understand? When we are told that the Earth will warm 1.5 degrees Celsius and the seas will rise perhaps a foot in that time, what does that mean in practical terms to people living in the Florida panhandle, or Kentucky, or Wyoming, or central New Mexico? Me, pretty sure I can handle an extra degree or a few more inches of water by the year 2100, especially since I won’t be around anymore, as is true of almost the entire existing population of Earth.

Perhaps that’s the root of the problem: first, the climate crisis is likely not as dire or existentially threatening as the AOC’s of the world would have us believe, because few of the dire projections take into account the likely advances in technology that will mitigate the negative effects, nor do they seem to give any credence to the fact that while, yes, manmade activities are contributing to the warming of the planet, natural, historic incremental climate changes taking place over milions of years are also at play. Some of us are losing our climate minds over an infinitesimally tiny blip in time, in the grand scheme of things. Second, most people look at the dire predictions and decide that either it won’t affect them all that badly, or that there is nothing they can do about it, and they have more important things to stress over, like how to put gas in their car and feed their families.

Says Dr. Ashley Ward, a climate health scientist at Duke University: “A lot of people don’t want big government in their lives, and don’t want to pay more taxes for programs or projects they don’t understand or think are necessary. I understand the push and pull here. But we need to adapt”.

Exactly, That’s the discussion I would like to (respectfully) see here. What is the best way to adapt? To me, wind and solar are not yet reliable sources of power, and can not always be harnessed and transported when and to where needed. We cannot now run away from fossil fuels, and will not be able to fully abandon them for decades. Nuclear power makes sense to me, as does adapting away from coastlines and flood-prone areas as we work to mitigate the effects of rising seas and temperatures. Why do we allow people in coastal areas whose homes and businesses are destroyed by flooding several times to go right back in and build in the same places? Could not $400 million dollars spent on a failed ocean wind farm have been put to better use in relocating have-not families in coastal and other areas? What about those affected by drought? So many questions – we have to do a better job than we are doing now.