Susan Feathers

In 1959 my father, a Lt. Colonel in the USAF, was assigned to Ice Island T-3 in the Baltic Sea. The iceberg base provided a landing zone in the era of nuclear threat.  However, there was a real physical threat to my father lurking in the shadows of the mess hall trailer.

Dad was a bomber pilot aging out of flight—a prospect he abhorred. Flying was his passion.  My mother believed her husband was banished to the “North Pole” by a tyrannical general at Plattsburgh AFB.  

Plattsburgh, New York is located near the Canadian border, a beautiful small town when we were assigned there. I skied at White Face Mountain and ice skated under the moon, ignoring the travails of adults. However, when Dad received his orders, it got my attention. He would be gone for a year, and Mom had just discovered she was pregnant.

Reality set in hard and stark. We women were moved from the three-story brick home on Officer’s Row to a Levittown-style house. Women and kids were ancillary baggage, last to be considered. My sisters and me took care of Mom. I matured early feeling responsible for her and my little sister.

The only communication with Dad was via Hamm radio. Our go-between in the mid-West became a friend. Desperate were our few conversations in the flickering voice transmission and static. Brief exchanges with Dad left me bereft. Mom was having trouble with her pregnancy—she’d given birth to us three girls and as many miscarriages prior to the Pill. At age 38 she was at risk. I worried constantly. I recall a quiet household. Waiting. Life on hold.

Then came the neighbor pounding on our door one Saturday morning, a Time magazine clutched in his hand. He held it up in front of him with one finger pointing to a small box in the corner where a polar bear glared and which read, “Colonel’s Wanted.”

My sisters and I hovered over Mom’s shoulders reading about the attack that happened one night as Dad left the mess hall. A polar bear foraging in a nearby trash receptacle suddenly turned on him. The reporter described Dad’s desperate attempt to flee in heavy gear and deep snow. He was saved from mauling when a pregnant female husky got in the way, and was mauled but held the bear off long enough for men inside to hear the ruckus, get a rifle and shoot the bear.

The husky survived and gave birth the next day despite her wounds, and not long after, Mom gave birth to a 10-pound baby girl, my sister Kathy. Several months later, Dad arrived at our doorstep looking very much like a bear. He’d gained 30 pounds, was white as a grub with dark circles under his beady black eyes and bushy eyebrows. A frightening countenance but nonetheless our cherished father.

He brought a wooden crate with him. The preserved skin of the polar bear– a parting gift to Dad, reminder of his frigid incarceration. It wasn’t until several years later that mom smelled a foul odor in our garage in Merced, California. The original preservation had been poorly executed and, alas, the bear skin never made it to a wall behind Dad’s desk.

Today, I recall that Time magazine photo of a ferocious polar bear and its cryptic message. The nuclear threat never materialized but the threat of human striving is manifest. T-3 is melting in the warming Northern Hemisphere. Polar bears are at risk in rapid ecological change. In the chronicles of a distant time there may yet be a photo of a human face and a final message, “Humans Wanted.”

Born into a military family in 1945 just a month before the end of WWII – the largest conflagration among humans in modern history – I have only known a great nation and people who believe in justice and freedom.

With each decade of my life I have participated in this nation’s great dreams and the struggle to fully realize them. I’ve learned about our collective warts and failings, even despicable acts upon our own people and people abroad, but I’ve never lost my faith in this Republic.

My parents, Millie and Ed Feathers, came from small towns in the South, working families, but strivers. They made sure their children got a college education, heretofore impossible for most working families. They had four daughters and all four of us have Master’s degrees.

Both my grandparents and parents believed in America, voted, read history, and as long as I lived at home, family time always included the discussion of ideas, politics, and social movements. They taught us to engage in our nation’s development. We did and we have remained so in our respective communities.

To be an American is to live up to high ideals of protecting the principles upon which the Republic was founded and working shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors to make this nation work for everyone and to protect fundamentals like the right to vote, and willingness to compromise when competing ideas threaten to tear the fabric of democracy in our hands.

These very basic but fundamental pillars of the Republic are embattled in this very moment. The only fix is for each American of any age to recommit to participate fully as a citizen, and that means protecting the right of vote and it means study, exchange of competing ideas, compromise, and faith that exercising these functions of a democracy will result in a strong nation.

If you want to live in a democracy, if you want America to be a bastion in the world for justice and freedom, then you have to work at it! I am exhausted with all the name calling and pointing to others to blame. Remember the old saying that when you point, three fingers are pointing back at you.

Stand up Americans, take personal responsibility, do your part, and soberly examine your part in the mess we have become. It’s mine and it’s your responsibility to get us back on a good path. This is true now just as it has always been at any point on our collective path to create a great democracy. If we fail, it’s mine and it’s your fault. Not some other person’s, party’s, or President’s fault.

We are in this together. Together we will fall or we will rise.

See this article in Forbes describing a new tool to follow sea level rise by region of the world, from decade to decade. NASA has prepared this new tool to help leaders and communities make plans to mitigate and adapt to rising sea rise as projected by the IPCC.

See the article.

Go here to see your country, state, or city climate change data on the Berkeley Earth website: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/country-list/

Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

  Compared to 1850–1900, global surface temperature averaged over 2081–2100 is very likely to be higher by 1.0°C to 1.8°C under the very low GHG emissions scenario considered (SSP1-1.9), by 2.1°C to 3.5°C in the intermediate scenario (SSP2-4.5) and by 3.3°C to 5.7°C under the very high GHG emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5)24. The last time global surface temperature was sustained at or above 2.5°C higher than 1850–1900 was over 3 million years ago (medium confidence).  

  Based on the assessment of multiple lines of evidence, global warming of 2°C, relative to 1850– 1900, would be exceeded during the 21st century under the high and very high GHG emissions scenarios considered in this report (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5, respectively). Global warming of 2°C would extremely likely be exceeded in the intermediate scenario (SSP2-4.5). Under the very low and low GHG emissions scenarios, global warming of 2°C is extremely unlikely to be exceeded (SSP1-1.9), or unlikely to be exceeded (SSP1-2.6)25. Crossing the 2°C global warming level in the mid-term period (2041–2060) is very likely to occur under the very high GHG emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5), likely to occur under the high GHG emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0), and more likely than not to occur in the intermediate GHG emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5)2

   Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost. 

  It is virtually certain that the land surface will continue to warm more than the ocean surface (likely 1.4 to 1.7 times more). It is virtually certain that the Arctic will continue to warm more than global surface temperature, with high confidence above two times the rate of global warming.
With every additional increment of global warming, changes in extremes continue to become larger. For example, every additional 0.5°C of global warming causes clearly discernible increases in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes, including heatwaves (very likely), and heavy precipitation (high confidence), as well as agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions (high confidence).   

  It is very likely that heavy precipitation events will intensify and become more frequent in most regions with additional global warming. At the global scale, extreme daily precipitation events are projected to intensify by about 7% for each 1°C of global warming (high confidence). The proportion of intense tropical cyclones (categories 4-5) and peak wind speeds of the most intense tropical cyclones are projected to increase at the global scale with increasing global warming (high confidence).  

Read Report Here

As the Earth warms, regions across the world may experience a heat phenomenon that can quickly kill people. Why? It prevents the body from sweating and thus cooling internal organs. It can be fatal.

What is wet bulb temperature?

Wet-bulb temperature accounts for both heat and humidity, unlike the standard temperature measurement you see on your weather app. It reflects what that combination means for the human body’s ability to cool down. [Washington Post, July 24, 2021 by Caroline Anders] To take a wet bulb temperature, wrap a moist cloth around a thermometer to measure at what temperature the body can no longer sweat to release internal heat into the atmosphere.

Find out how much your state is heating up with climate change

Why should we care?

From Science Magazine, The Emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerances.

“Humans’ ability to efficiently shed heat has enabled us to range over every continent, but a wet-bulb temperature (TW) of 35°C marks our upper physiological limit, and much lower values have serious health and productivity impacts. Climate models project the first 35°C TW occurrences by the mid-21st century. However, a comprehensive evaluation of weather station data shows that some coastal subtropical locations have already reported a TW of 35°C and that extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979. Recent exceedances of 35°C in global maximum sea surface temperature provide further support for the validity of these dangerously high TW values. We find the most extreme humid heat is highly localized in both space and time and is correspondingly substantially underestimated in reanalysis products. Our findings thus underscore the serious challenge posed by humid heat that is more intense than previously reported and increasingly severe.” (35°C × 9/5) + 32 = 95°F)

In the last week of abnormally high temperatures and high humidity in Bowling Green, KY, Weather Bug notifications issued warnings on wet/bulb temperature conditions that threatened human health. I looked on the Warren County Health Department website and the Bowling Green Daily News and found no information on these conditions.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke – how to recognize them and what to do:

Both heat exhaustion and heat stroke are serious conditions. Heat exhaustion begins with general muscle weakness, sudden excessive sweating, nausea and vomiting, and possible fainting. A heat stroke is when your body’s internal temperature reaches over 103 degrees. You begin experiencing a loss or change of consciousness, agitated, unexplained behavior changes, hot, red, and dry skin.  All of these symptoms should be taken seriously. This is from Comanche County Hospital in Oklahoma: Heat Exhaustion versus heat stroke. Instructions on how to recognize each and how to prevent these conditions, as well as what to do if either are recognized.

As citizens we need to make sure our county health departments are educating the public about these conditions. Make sure they do.

As a novelist who writes climate change stories, I try to show characters who are experiencing the impacts of climate disturbance. The forces that impact people are multifaceted, ranging from emotional to economic to physical. I feel it my duty as a writer to also suggest solutions and to empower characters who represent communities that traditionally are affected disproportionately. See my 2016 novel, Threshold.

High Country News conducted an interesting project in 2019 from the premise that speculative journalism could potentially accomplish more than strict fact-based journalism has not been able to accomplish. Read this article below included here with permission from High Country News.

The case for speculative journalism
Climate fiction can help us imagine the impacts of climate change in a way
that science journalism can’t. Brian Calvert | Aug. 19, 2019 | From the print edition of High Country News

In June 1988, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, testified before a congressional committee, where he announced,
with 99% certainty, that human-caused global warming was real. A year later, the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group formed by fossil fuel
companies, began a determined effort to stymie climate action. Hansen, being a scientist, based his testimony on scientific fact. The GCC lobbyists, being slimeballs, based their efforts on telling stories — including, incredibly, the 1992 release of a video claiming that adding CO2
to the atmosphere would boost crop yields and end world hunger.

Thirty years later, we are still fighting stories with facts, and the results have
been underwhelming. While it is easy to get frustrated by this state of affairs, it is also easy to understand why it’s happening. Global warming is a human-caused phenomenon that exceeds the human capacity for understanding. The typical institutions that we rely on to guide government policy — science and journalism — have not been fully up to the task. We know this at HCN because we cover, over and again, a changing climate. The facts are there, and the problem is still there — and getting worse. So last December, when the U.S. government issued a damning, detailed assessment on the climate, even we were at a loss with what to do with it. How, we wondered, can we help people understand the importance of all these facts, if the facts aren’t enough to speak for themselves?

One possible answer is this issue, a departure from our usual rigorous, fact-based journalism, and a foray into the world of imagination. Call it science fiction, or, if you prefer, speculative journalism. We took the projections of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, interviewed scientists, pored over studies — then imagined what the West would look like 50 years from the release of the report.

The result is a multiverse of future Wests, all set in the year 2068. No two stories take place in the same reality, but each is a reflection of possibilities presented in the climate assessment. In some, the West verges on satirical catastrophe. In others, technology steps up as reality melts away. Some of us imagined a better world; others imagined how much worse things might get. Readers weighed in, too. Taken together, we hope these stories inspire further exploration of the national climate assessment, which is available online and is an impressive body of work. For our hardcore readers, we’ve provided a citations page, where more information on the relevant science and studies can be found.

None of these stories are true, but any of them could be. The fact is, we don’t really know what climate chaos will bring … but we do know that enormous challenges — and opportunities — lie ahead. Our chance to change the future is now, but we’ll need a better story first.

Poring through all of this peer-reviewed scientific literature wasn’t easy. Luckily, the writers in this issue were aided by countless experts, including climate scientists, rangeland ecologists, hydrologists and others, who helped us interpret climate models and clearly imagine these many possible future Wests. See references to scientific research each piece was based on at the end of the story.

Brian Calvert is the editor-in-chief of High Country News. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. Follow @brcalvert