Phrase of the Day: NOT A GOOD NEWS STORY

After Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the island of Puerto Rico is in shambles.  To say that almost everywhere one looks, it looks like a bomb went off would be an understatement.  The devastation is massive.

I do not mean this to diminish the damage and suffering incurred by parts of Texas and Louisiana, and almost the entirety of Florida, after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  The loss and cost of rebuilding in all of those states will be immense and take several years.  However, Puerto Rico is an island that was already not up to the standards of infrastructure as those in the U.S. mainland, thus already operating from a deficit before Hurricane Irma hit, let alone the follow-up, and far more severe, punch of Hurricane Maria shortly afterward.  Reports of devastation and total destruction have become commonplace.

Yesterday, one of my Facebook friends shared a post from someone on the ground, in the thick of things in the hurricanes' aftermath.  The original post came from someone in a town called Trujillo Alto, roughly thirteen miles (twenty-one kilometers) southwest of San Juan.  It describes, first-hand, the devastation the author has seen:
        "I am here right now with a sip from a cell tower, which will probably have its diesel
        stolen promptly and will fade out.  3 died today from lack of dialysis in a hospital -
        no power for six days, no diesel for the emergency generators, no diesel for the diesel
        trucks to take the diesel.  I spent 12 hours today to get fuel to go work and the fuel
        tanker never arrived to the station.  Over 3,000 cadavers were unearthed naturally by
        flooding in Lares and now float on the township, creating pestilence problems.  There
        are over 1,200 containers with aid and supplies (food, everything for we are an island)
        that cannot be distributed for truckers don't have diesel for the trucks.  I have seen a
        grand total of 2 National Guard trucks going from Ponce up Cayey since the hurricane.
        That's all the US military presence I've seen firsthand.  99% of everything has been
        done by us, manually.  Police have no radio, no comms, no phones, no gas to move
        their cars.  99% of PR has no electricity, and 75% has no running water.  Over 90%
        of cell phone service is down.  I'm living with a knife-edge machete alongside me,
        because of the looting and crime. That's the current [situation] in a nutshell, no BS."

President Trump's response, both verbal/posted and putting relief efforts in motion, has been disgraceful.  Terms such as unpresidential, inhumane, out of touch, and disgraceful are on point.  First, listen to this interview with the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the ports that hold vital relief supplies are located, Carmen Yulin Cruz, who is in the thick of things. 


Not only was Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke's statement two days ago out of touch, although she changed her tune only after heading down to Puerto Rico yesterday, President Trump's own comments have been nothing short of disgusting.

From five days ago, after a long silence ...

... and from just today ...

What the hell kind of a response is that?!  Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and has been for decades, so its residents are U.S. citizens.  While the response had been slow to some degree after Hurricane Harvey in Texas and after Hurricane Irma in Florida, the President has not shown this contempt to those states.  Why?  Last I checked, a U.S. citizen is a U.S. citizen. 

Adding insult to injury, the remainder of the last tweet just above reads:

Has he blamed the victims for not moving relief efforts along more?  Check.  (Great, blame the victims.)  Has he blamed the fake news for disparaging the relief efforts?  Check.  (Broken record.)  Has he has yammered on about how great the relief effort has been going?  Check.  (Repetition and superlatives are not proof.)

President Trump accused San Juan Mayor Cruz of poor leadership.  In psychology, that is known as "projection".

Terry

Number of the Day: 10,000

Hard to believe, but it's true.  The Keyboard Commentarian has passed 10,000 views!  I am truly grateful that so many people have found this blog, and to those who come back again and again.  A special thank you, if I may, to those who come back, especially since, as I have mentioned before, I do not post with much regularity.  This is not a daily, weekly, or necessarily an even monthly blog.  I feel that, when I feel strongly enough on a subject, I will be (as I state right underneath the page title) sitting in front of my keyboard ... commenting.

Clearly, many, many people from around the world have found this blog, as the top ten list below shows...

In addition to these -- if you did the math, you know the numbers above do not add up to 10,000 even, let alone more than -- there have been views from many other locations around the world.  Locations such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Tanzania, Mexico, the Philippines, Australia, and Romania, to name a few.  I have mentioned it in the past, but I am still amazed at the interconnectedness (albeit, merely electronically) that the World Wide Web provides.  

It was back on February 20, 2015, that this blog passed 5,000 views -- two years and eight months after my first post in June of 2012.  It has taken two years and seven months to go from 5,000 views to 10,000 views.  Not too shabby.  (Maybe sometime in the Spring of 2020 will bring 15,000 views?)

All I can say is thanks to all of you who have found this blog and, hopefully, keep coming back.  If you enjoy what I write, please pass the address of this blog along to anyone who you think might also enjoy it.  As always, my hope is to continue writing about things that interest you and that keep you coming back.

Terry

Phrase of the Day: PERIOD OF CONSEQUENCES

My original idea for this post was to talk about Hurricane Harvey, which inundated parts of coastal and southeastern Texas, as well as portions of eastern Louisiana.  Instead, based on what is happening right now, my focus will be on global warming.

My memory may not be on point, especially since I don't live in a part of the country where hurricanes are regular occurrences, but I remember when hurricane season came around each year, there was usually one major hurricane (maybe two) and some smaller storms.  These storms would cause damage and flooding to varying degrees.  Additionally, a number these storms went out to sea or dissipated without rebuilding strength once they passed over land for a while.  There may have been years where that was not the case, but that is, in the broadest terms, how I remember this time of year.

In recent years, however, things have changed.  The hurricane season has changed.  Hurricanes themselves have changed ... a lot.  This hurricane season has been the most dramatic and devastating result of current global warming.  We can look back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina and its devastation, including nearly 1,900 deaths.  There is Superstorm Sandy in 2012, called such as it was a "perfect storm"-like convergence of a hurricane (Sandy) and a nor-easter storm, which hit large portions of my home state of New Jersey, New York City, and New England area.  The first few weeks of Fall last year saw Hurricane Matthew cause massive damage to parts of South Carolina and Florida.  Other areas affected by these storms, including Hurricane Katrina, include the Greater and Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Bahamas.

Let us look at just the past month alone.  Beginning in mid-August and lasting through early September, Hurricane Harvey took a rather unusual track, making landfall, turning around, going back out over the Gulf of Mexico, and then making landfall as second time.

More recently, Florida -- along with the Antilles, Barbados (which was, in effect, rendered uninhabitable), Cuba, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Cape Verde -- was devastated by Hurricane Irma.

In addition to the hurricane itself, there were reports of tornadoes that popped up in various parts of Florida, just as they did during Hurricane Harvey.

In the history of record-keeping for hurricanes, there have never been two hurricanes in the same year that made landfall at Category 4.  Both Harvey and Irma were Cat 4 when they made landfall.

Something else that has never happened before is the existence of three concurrent hurricanes.  Along with the extent of Harvey and Irma and Hurricane Katia which hit the southern part of Mexico as a Cat 1 hurricane.  (This image was recorded much earlier in the hurricanes' paths.  Lee, on the far right, remains a tropical depression.)
                     

Currently, we have two hurricanes in play, Jose and Maria.

Jose is expected to do a clockwise turn in the Atlantic which would bring in closer to the northeastern coast of the United States.

And Hurricane Maria, which taking a more northern track than Irma, is still going to affect many of the island areas are hammered by Hurricane Irma.  As of this posting, Maria is a Category 5 hurricane and heading for Puerto Rico, which was hit hard by Hurricane Irma.

To be fair, any hurricane or tornado can bring a lot of damage, of course, but the more intense the winds and the slower it moves, the greater the amount of damage and loss of life.  The conditions for the creation and strengthening of hurricanes exists.  The resulting warmer waters from global warming are like fuel for hurricanes.  Time and time again, even hometown weather forecasters reiterate the warmer the water, the greater the fuel for hurricanes.  And yet, many people say the water's temperature is unto itself, with little to no effect on anything else.

Does this look like global warming is having no effect on water temperature and the amount of storm-related activity?  (Image from two days ago.)

Do I believe that the Earth gets colder and warmer on its own over centuries of millennia?  Yes, I do.  I also believe, however, that there can be mitigating circumstances that can retard or accelerate the heating or cooling.  Just like any science experiment, the same elements and conditions that produce a certain result can bring about a different result if any of the those elements or conditions are changed.  Therefore, I cannot accept that humanity's increased expulsion of fossil fuels has zero effect on the climate.  Just on a basic level, to say that it's impossible seems impossible to me. 

I have made the following argument before on different topics, but it also applies to global warming: Do the politicians and business leaders around the world have to be directly affected to a devastating degree before they address global warming as a serious issue that mandates action?  It certainly seems that way.  In the meantime, while it is not yet knocking on their door, people are losing their lives, their property, and their hope.

Tell that to the people of Barbados...

...or to the people of the Turks and Caicos islands...

...or to the people of Puerto Rico...

...or to the people of Florida...

There are those who refer to the Earth as Mother (Mother Earth), as the personification of this planet we have been given.  Whether you see it in those terms or not, the main point is that this planet is a living thing.  Along the lines of you reap what you sow, you get as good as you give, what you put in is what you get out, Earth is showing us cause and effect on a global scale.  Not on a small scale, as perhaps a remote tribe unable to comprehend it, but to all of us.  Ignorance is no excuse.  The time to deal with global warming has been here.  Are we at a point of no return?  There is some disagreement on that, but why err on the side of throwing caution to the wind?

There have been different periods in the history of the world, usually referred to as "ages" (i.e. Stone Age, Ice Age, Middle Ages).  I am not sure if this term has reached modern antiquity status, but it has been said that we are (were) in the Information Age.  (Perhaps with all of this information and the lack of global action, this might be called the Ignorance Age.)

What period are we in right now?
  


Terry