Let's name extreme weather after the fossil fuel companies that caused it

I grew up near Flint, Michigan. Perhaps a year ago Brother commented that we had all we needed in our small town – schools, church, and shopping. We occasionally ventured into the city for the cinema and to Sears or some sort of district wide church event. So while I grew up near Flint I can’t say I knew a lot about Flint. For instance, I didn’t know what Chevy in the Hole meant. I mention it because I just finished a novel by that name by Kelsey Ronan. That phrase refers to the site of the Chevrolet plant along the Flint River, a bit west of downtown. It is where the famous 1937 sitdown strike happened (I had always thought that happened somewhere near the huge Buick City complex that had been towards the northeast of the city, only thinking now that Chevrolet and Buick are not the same thing, though both are a part of General Motors). That Chevrolet plant was torn down long ago (as has Buick City) and the area is now a riverside park officially named Chevy Commons. This is the story of August Molloy, who is white and nearly dies of a drug overdose and returns to Flint to be with family as he recovers and works toward sobriety. This happens in 2014, just before the Flint Water Crisis. Along the way he is fascinated by Monae, who is black and the lead person at an urban farm near the factory site. Much of the story is about their relationship and how the water crisis affects it. The rest of the story is about their ancestors in important moments in Flint history. That sitdown strike and the affect it had on the wives. WWII and Flint as a part of the Arsenal of Democracy. The 1953 Beecher tornado and Billy Durant’s ventures into bowling alleys. The 1967 riots, somewhat in sympathy with the Detroit riots that year. I wish the author had supplied a genealogy chart of the two families so I could keep track of who’s who. One name mentioned in passing is a central character a few chapters later. Even so, I enjoyed the book. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that even though July isn’t over it can be declared the hottest globally on record. The only thing that could keep July from claiming a record is a sudden ice age, which isn’t in the forecast. Most of the time a month will break the record by hundredths of degrees or maybe a tenth. This time July will pass the record by at least 0.2C. And Phoenix has passed 27 days above 110F. Last Saturday Kos of Kos posted a Ukraine update. He begins by noting a crucial difference between Russian and Ukraine – Russia doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes. It looks like Ukraine does. Kos also looked at what the Russian propagandists are saying after Russia pulled out of the deal that let Ukraine ship grain to the rest of the world. Visegrád 24 has a video of Russia Today’s Margarita Simonyan:

All our hope is in a famine. The famine will start now, and they will lift the sanctions, and be friends with us, because they will realize it is necessary.

Kos responded:

Note, this “famine” isn’t Europe. Ukrainian grain destined to European markets get there via rail. This famine is Africa. Russia wants African to starve, because then, maybe, the West will cave to Russian cruelty. The problem for Russia is that the West doesn’t actually care about Africa. That’s been the problem all along. Russia certainly never learned the adage that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Their propaganda isn’t about working together with allies for the common betterment of all. For Russia, that’s weakness. They’re all about threats and nuclear weapons blah blah blah.

That propaganda bit prompted a cartoon from Jeff Danzinger, posted on Kos. One person is cutting a loaf of bread labeled “Ukraine wheat.” Another says:

Ok, now our next step is to starve people who we don’t even know. This should lead to victory very quickly.

In an update on Wednesday Kos wrote that Ukraine’s counteroffensive appears to be picking up strength. Ukrainian sources are being very quiet, though Russian sources are freaking out. In Thursday’s update Kos reported that the Pentagon is saying Ukrainian officials told them that an enlarged Ukrainian force will try to advance south towards Tokmak and Melitopol. Other sources also say that Ukraine is making significant gains. Kos included a tweet (can one still say that?), well, a satellite image posted by Michael Cruickshank that shows where the front lines have been for several months. There’s the white of the dried up reservoir bed, then a swath of green, which is fields that haven’t been harvested because doing so is too dangerous. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the nasty guy is well known for his manipulation of the legal system. Over his business life he’s filed 3500 lawsuits to punish or intimidate his opponents and bury them in costs and hassle. And if a lawsuit was filed against him he knew how to counterattack, undermine, work the press, delay, and lie. If forced to settle, he would claim victory. That strategy works well in civil court where the opponent is a regular person or a regulatory body, where losing means writing a check (or declaring bankruptcy). Bu the nasty guy is now facing criminal court. Those tactics don’t work so well. Prosecutors seek justice, not compromise. They’re not easily rattled as civil litigators might be. And losing means jail. That the nasty guy hasn’t realized the difference is shown by his handling of classified documents. He could have returned the documents – and was given many opportunities to do so – but he put himself in legal peril by hiding them. The tactics that have served him so well for 50 years don’t provide the same options in criminal court. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that the No Labels group is saying a third-party candidate is appropriate because, as national co-chair Larry Hogan said, “almost 70 percent of the people in America do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president.” But Kos and their Civiqs polling found:

Voters might not be thrilled with the choices, but they are definitely not clamoring for a third-party option. In fact, they reject that idea pretty soundly in that 66% would not vote for a spoiler. ... The high voter motivation combined with a very healthy dismissal of a third-party candidate shoots every justification by No Labels for interfering in this election to hell. So why are they doing this? Maybe it’s just the grift. Maybe they just like to be assholes. Or maybe they’re simply Republicans who can’t stomach supporting Trump. Whatever the motivation, they’re playing a dangerous game.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a few quotes worth mentioning. First, from The Messenger:

Republicans view President Joe Biden as ripe for defeat in 2024. But recently, they’ve been zeroing in on who they see as an even easier target: Kamala Harris. As Harris has stepped up her role as campaign trail attack dog, GOP presidential candidates are leaning even harder into attacking the vice president as a way to highlight voters’ wariness over Biden’s age. Given that the 80-year-old Biden is the oldest person to ever occupy the Oval Office, the argument goes, a vote for him is equivalent to elevating Harris — who by many measures is even less popular than her boss — to commander-in-chief.

A bit of a quote from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post discussing the law that calls teaching difficult historical topics in an “impartial” (as in not biased and not woke):

But this idea is deeply flawed. An outbreak of resistance to anti-woke hysteria in Tennessee shows how. This week, a group of teachers filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate Tennessee’s law limiting the teaching of race and gender. The statute, signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in 2021, is absurdly vague: It prohibits pedagogy that includes allegedly divisive concepts without defining what that means, leaving teachers fearful that even neutral mentions of such concepts could violate the law.

In the comments is a cartoon by Rob Rogers showing a white man whipping a slave and saying, “I’m just adding to your resumé... You’re welcome!” And a cartoon by Megan Herbert showing a meteorology center where a woman is handing a man a report:

He: This is... A list of fossil fuel companies…? She: Yes, our shortlist of names for this season’s catastrophic storms.

Yes, lets “start naming extreme weather events after the fossil fuel companies that caused them. They knew. They profited. They continue to profit. The world boils.”