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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 26, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2018 Government climate report warns of worsening disasters By SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press WASHINGTON — As California’s catastrophic wild- fires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a mas- sive new federal report warns that these types of disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. The White House report quietly issued Friday also fre- quently contradicts President Donald Trump. The National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in Cal- ifornia this month and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warm- ing-charged extremes “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.” The last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. The recent Northern Cal- ifornia wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connec- tion to those in Southern Cali- fornia, said co-author William Hohenstein of the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture. AP Photo/Noah Berger Firefighter Jose Corona sprays water as flames from the Camp Fire consume a home Nov. 9 in Magalia, Calif. “A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years,” he said at a press conference Friday. The report is mandated by law every few years and is based on more than 1,000 previous research studies. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the United States and how it impacts different sectors of the economy, including energy and agriculture. “Climate change is trans- forming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the econ- omy, and the natural systems that support us,” the report says. That includes worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, the potential for 1 of first black women in Coast Guard dies at 103 By KEN MILLER Associated Press OKLAHOMA CITY — Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riots and among the first black women in the Coast Guard, has died. She was 103. Hooker was 6 years old when one of the worst race riots in U.S. history broke out and destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street.” She hid under a table as a torch-car- rying mob destroyed her fam- ily’s home, she told National Public Radio in an interview this year. She recalled hearing the mob use an axe to destroy her sister’s piano. For a child, she said, it was horrifying trying to keep quiet. “The most shocking was seeing people you’d never done anything to irri- tate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things,” said Hooker, who died this week at her home in New York, according to her goddaughter. The number of deaths from the riot was never con- firmed, but estimates vary from about three dozen to 300 or more. The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa. Following the riots, Hooker’s family moved. And during World War II, she became the first Afri- can-American woman to join the Coast Guard as a mem- ber of the Semper Paratus program, or SPAR, in which she prepared discharges for guardsmen returning from the war and rejoining civil- ian life. “She was a national trea- sure, she was a very special AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta Dr. Olivia Hooker, 90, gives her personal account of the of the 1921 Tulsa race riots at a 2005 briefing before members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other leaders. lady,” Coast Guard spokes- man Barry Lane said. She went on to earn a mas- ter’s degree from Colum- bia University and a Ph.D. in psychology from the Uni- versity of Rochester, and later worked as a professor at Fordham University in New York, according to the Coast Guard. Her goddaughter, Janis Porter, said Hooker died Wednesday at their home in White Plains, New York. Por- ter said her godmother had no surviving relatives. She didn’t provide a cause of death. “Her mind was clear, no dementia. She was just tired,” Porter said Friday. Hooker was also a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Com- mission, now called the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission, which has sought reparations for those impacted by the vio- lence and their survivors. a jump in deaths during heat waves, and nastier allergies. “Annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century — more than the cur- rent gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states,” the report says. It’ll be especially costly on the nation’s coasts because of rising seas and severe storm surges, which will lower prop- erty values. And in some areas, such as parts of Alaska and Louisiana, coastal flood- ing will likely force people to relocate. “We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life,” said another co-author, Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech Univer- sity. “As a climate scientist it is almost surreal.” And co-author Donald Wuebbles, a University of Illi- nois climate scientist, said, “We’re going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense.” What makes the report dif- ferent from others is that it focuses on the United States, then goes more local and granular. “All climate change is local,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Richard Alley, who wasn’t part of the report but praised it. While scientists talk of average global temperatures, people feel extremes more, he said. “We live in our drought, our floods and our heat waves. That means we have to focus on us,” he said. The Lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees since 1900, with 1.2 degrees in the last few decades, according to the report. By the end of the century, the U.S. will be 3 to 12 degrees hotter depend- ing on how much greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. Outside scientists and offi- cials from 13 federal agen- cies wrote the report, which was released on the afternoon following Thanksgiving. It was originally scheduled for December. The report often clashes with the president’s past statements and tweets on the legitimacy of climate change science, how much of it is caused by humans, how cyclical it is and what’s causing increases in recent wildfires. “WHEN REBECCA SINGS, THE SUN COMES OUT” -JOHNNY MANDEL REBECCA KILGORE AND HER BAND SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1 7:30 PM “Rebecca is one of the best interpreters of The Great American Songbook” “In a world of pretenders, she’s absolutely the real thing” “If Benny Goodman were alive today, he’d hire Becky to sing in his band” NCRD PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 36155 9 TH ST • NEHALEM TICKETS: AVAILABLE AT TICKETTOMATO.COM THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS... ADVANCED SALE $ 18 +TICKET FEE RESERVED SEATING $ 23 +TICKET FEE AT THE DOOR $ 22. 75+TICKET FEE WWW.NCRD.COM I still have some chapters left to write, things I want to do yet. Feel free to take a vacation. I might do that, too. Grateful to be here, Ann Give Back during the G ivinG T uesday M oveMenT Tuesday November 27 th Join CCR during a one-day donation drive to prepare for winter by filling our generator propane tanks and other needs around the station. KMUN ◆ KTCB ◆ KCPB P.O. Box 269, Astoria, OR 97103 503.325.0010 Listen online CoastRadio.org prov idenceoregon . org / de a rnorthcoa s t
