Thursday, March 21, 2019

Facts, reality swamp Walker's climate change stupidity

So let's pull on our journalistic hip waders for a slog through post-Walker Wisconsin:

* We begin with Walker's DNR scrubbing numerous links and other materials from its web pages, noted on this blog in 2012 - - 
DNR Fights Climate Change...By Deleting Most Of Climate Change Web Content
- - and again in a 2016 update.

* Also in 2012 I reposted again information about a warning from the US EPA in 2003 to Midwestern public officials who needed to upgrade flood control planning in a warming, changing climate: 
In 2003, EPA Predicted Heavier Rain Events
Then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and I attended a conference in Chicago in 2003, hosted by Mayor Richard Daley, where officials from the EPA told Midwestern elected leaders that climate change models predicted heavier rain events.
The EPA officials were urging the Midwestern leaders to adapt their planning and spending to more aggressively confront storm water and related services because heavier, intense rains were going to be come more frequent.
Part of the message was: forget the notion of the "100-year-storm." They'll come more often than that in the Midwest as the atmosphere warms.
Team Walker's response. Nada. Worse, Walker's DNR completed in 2016 its climate change web scrubbing, which I noted immediately and became a widely-distributed Wisconsin and national story
Under Wisconsin’s Walker, a Climate Website Scrubbed of Climate Science
A recent reboot of language on a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website about climate change and the Great Lakes, as first exposed by James Rowen, holds hints of what to watch for as the Trump administration assesses a vast array of climate web pages created under eight years of the Obama presidency. 
* The flooding has persisted, leaving Walker and the First Lady 
Cover-flood-Walker-crJudithDavidoff-08302018.jpg
Judith Davidoff photo 
to take to sand-bagging during his losing re-election campaign while a lone protester got into the photo op with a spot-on handmade sign.

*  Which bring us to these headlines today:
Great Lakes states are warming faster than rest of US, more flooding is in store, new report says
Over $1 million flood damage in Wisconsin
Severe Midwest flooding could last all spring 
Just another mess left behind by Walker for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to confront.

And by the way, the DNR is still going with its sanitized, ignorance-fueled climate change mush that has been sitting there on its website like an ad for buggy whips or eight-track tape decks for exactly 26 months

Can we please get a science-based replacement and some information about climate-based infrastructure and flood-prevention planning before the next wave hit?

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