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”
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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
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G ivinG T uesday
M oveMenT
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November 27 th
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