Diary Of The Last Age

In the second chapter of my novel I developed a group of people, I called "alarmists", loosely based on the 19th Century Abolitionists, who take the battle for global warming to the oil industry.  This is coming true .  Ken Ward, 61, a longtime environmental activist from New England, closed a shut-off valve on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline near Mount Vernon, Wash. Leonard Higgins, 66, a soft-spoken Unitarian and retired state-government employee from Corvallis, Ore., closed a shut-off valve on the Enbridge Express Pipeline near Coal Banks Landing, Mont. Emily Johnston, 51, an editor and a poet, and Annette Klapstein, 65, a retired attorney for the Puyallup tribe, traveled together from Seattle to Leonard, Minn., and turned the shut-off valves on a pair of pipelines owned by Enbridge. The five men and women said little about themselves, dwelling instead on what they saw as the existential threat of climate change and the inadequacy of available legal remedies

Satellite data confirm what computer models have warned for years : Oceans are rising faster as the planet warms, and coastal communities face increasing flood risk. Rising sea levels increase the risk of storm surge flooding in coastal cities like Charleston, South Carolina, shown here after Hurricane Matthew. Credit: Brian Blanco/Getty Images Even cities that already know they're at risk may not be able to prepare fast enough without additional investments in disaster relief and resilience. That includes Tampa, where his university is based. The city has been listed as one of the 10 cities globally most vulnerable to sea level rise. If the rates of adaptation and mitigation don't keep pace, damage from storm surges and extreme rains is likely to increase. Some scientists also warn that a rapid disintegration of Antarctica's ice sheets could push sea level up much faster and higher, by as much as 4 to 10 feet by 2100.  The last time Earth was as warm as it