climate change Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Labor Day heroes who aren’t even working

climate.us

I’ve come to honor Labor Day heroes who aren’t even working for pay.

ITEM 1: Fired Federal Employees Are Bringing Climate Change Info Back to the People. Scientists are preserving vital climate-related information amid the regime’s attacks on climate science.

“Since June 23, a group of former employees of the communications branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been busily resurrecting one of the government’s premier educational websites on climate change.

“Climate.gov was started in the early 2010s by communicators with NOAA, and for more than a decade it consistently produced high-quality graphics and other charts documenting rising global temperatures, changing rain patterns, drought conditions, El Niño impacts, and other climate-related data….

“In February 2025, as the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) purges accelerated, most of the staff and contractors attached to the website were fired…

Let me interrupt this with something I did not fully know:

ITEM 2: DOGE officially shuts down on July 4, 2026!

“But the initiative did not come without a cost to taxpayers. In December 2025, the executive director of the environmental nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) claimed the [regime] cost taxpayers an estimated $10 billion in 2025 through its deferred resignation program.

“Ironically, this unreasonably costly mass idling of civil servants was done in the name of ‘government efficiency.’

Back to our main story:

“A year after Climate.gov’s demise, [former employees] resurrected the vast majority of its materials…The new, privately run site is Climate.us, and it contains a wealth of sophisticated data sets and graphics on the world’s climate…”

Their work has inspired ex-government employees in several other agencies.

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) communicators are… now looking to resurrect climate-related EPA pages that have been taken down; a group called the Public Environmental Data Partners is attempting to rescue specialist environmental monitoring tools — it has some information online, but not yet a fully interactive website. Another group, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, is working to save specialized environmental justice screening tools. As the [regime] deliberately shreds decades of climate-related research, ex-government employees are attempting to ride to the rescue by creating a sort of shadow information-dispersal system. The American Geophysical Union, which most U.S. Earth scientists are members of, has been instrumental in putting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change back on track after the Trump administration pulled support for its annual reports….

Replacement

The Climate.us site now is seeing close to a million visitors a month, putting it up there with where the NOAA-run site was before its demise. Teachers use it frequently, as do an array of others simply trying to get an accurate read on what is happening to the climate.

As with the old government-run website, Climate.us has a network of scientific advisers around the country willing to lend their expertise to the project and to make sure that what the communications people write up is scientifically accurate.

Preserving “this vital climate-related information in an era of administration-enforced environmental ignorance has become a mission. ‘Climate information shouldn’t be available to the public just on a political basis or a whim.’ There ought to be a way to ‘promote public climate literacy and to equip people to turn knowledge into meaningful conversations and climate-conscious actions.'”

I shared this news with a former dedicated employee of one of the agencies mentioned, and they were thrilled and heartened that the work they had participated in could be preserved.

“SO glad to see this! It reminds me of how people hurriedly photocopied files that Anne Gorsuch wanted destroyed under ray-gun. I knew some of them.” Not incidentally, Anne Gorsuch was the mother of current SCOTUS justice Neil Gorsuch.

They mentioned the Wayback Machine; unfortunately, I have found that route to climate.gov unsuccessful.

These unpaid workers are heroes, in my book. So on Labor Day, let me salute those who are doing the work to undo ignorance.

Earth Day 2026 is depressing

exemption from Clean Air Act

I can’t be the only one who believes Earth Day 2026 is depressing. This year alone, the regime has repealed the 2009 endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, eliminating the foundation of much of U.S. climate policy.

The LA Times noted: “The decision reverses decades of environmental progress despite overwhelming scientific evidence and opposition from health experts, environmental groups, 50 cities and 17 states. Experts warn the repeal will increase pollution, respiratory disease, and planet-warming emissions over the coming decades…

“The repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding — a conclusion based on decades of science that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — represents one of the biggest environmental rollbacks in U.S. history, and the latest in a series of actions by [FOTUS] to scrap policies and regulations designed to curb the use of fossil fuels and accelerate the transition to clean energy.

“The administration… also dismantled all federal emissions regulations governing vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”

Profit over people

Daily Kos: FOTUS is forcing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to abandon its legal obligation to protect human health and the environment – by granting more than one-third of the nearly 550 polluting facilities nationwide a two-year exemption from Clean Air Act rules, allowing dangerous air pollution to go unchecked.

“The Clean Air Act exists to protect people from harmful pollutants—such as ethylene oxide, mercury, and lead—known to cause cancer and other serious health harms. But instead of enforcing the law, Trump is siding with corporate polluters and putting our communities at risk.

“So far, 188 exemptions have already been granted to coal power plants, chemical manufacturers, commercial sterilizers, and other polluters. Another 366 are eligible for the same two-year exemption.

We don’t need no stinkin’ research

MoveOn: As we mark Earth Month this April, the [regime] is quietly making yet another catastrophic attack on our environment.

“The U.S. Forest Service, housed under the Department of Agriculture (USDA), has announced plans to shutter a staggering 57 of its 77 research facilities across 31 states—that’s almost 75%.¹ These are the labs and scientists tracking how wildfires spread, how droughts are deepening, and how the climate crisis is reshaping 193 million acres of American forests and grasslands.

“This is all part of a deliberate, sweeping attack on climate science through defunding research, silencing scientists, and prioritizing corporate interests over the health of our public lands.”

Thus, last month was the hottest March on record for the continental U.S., federal data shows.”

Here are the Executive Orders on energy and the environment, 2025-2026. They include “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry,” and a bunch of other groanworthy titles .

At a point where the US should do more to try a Project Hail Mary to slow the impending ecological chaos, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and others are actively working to make things worse.

Happy Earth Day.

Sometimes I weep

measles, ICE detention

When I read stories about preventable chaos in the US, I sometimes feel enraged. But sometimes I weep.

As I read that the regime has, per the LA Times [paywall likely], “reversed the U.S. government’s longstanding scientific conclusion that planet-heating pollution seriously threatens Americans, erasing a foundational piece of the country’s efforts to address climate change,” I fret, What kind of country are we leaving my daughter? I cry a bit.

ICE detention

Democracy Now highlights “The Children of Dilley.” “That’s the title of a new ProPublica investigation into the South Texas Family Residential Center, a sprawling ICE detention complex in the town of Dilley, a few dozen miles from the southern border with Mexico. It’s run by the private prison company CoreCivic. Dilley was first opened by the Obama administration in 2014.”

It’s a place “where families describe horrific conditions inside, such as being served contaminated food, with children and parents at times finding worms in their meals. Lights are reportedly left on for 24 hours a day. [It] detains an estimated 3,500 people, more than half of them children.

“There are also mounting reports of psychological abuse by guards, some of whom have allegedly threatened families with separation. ‘Many of the children who are now being sent there are being arrested by ICE around the country, and some of them, like Ariana, have been living [in the U.S.] for years,’ says Mica Rosenberg, investigative reporter at ProPublica.”

Sadism makes me weep.

Measles

What REALLY did me in, though, was a story in The Atlantic. I don’t currently have a subscription, but there is a feature called “One Story to Read Today” that “highlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.”

The title was This Is How A Child Dies Of Measles by Elizabeth Bruenig. From the excerpt: “You don’t want to worry your daughter, so you try to sound calm when you call the pediatrician and describe her symptoms at a rapid clip. The receptionist responds gently, types swiftly, and then pauses. Are your children vaccinated? she asks. Her tone is flat and inscrutable, but you detect an undercurrent of judgment. You wince and tell her the truth. No, you say, no vaccines. She puts you on hold.

“While you wait, you take your son out of his high chair and wipe his runny nose with his bib. The receptionist is back. She asks if you can be at the office within the hour. In an even, professional voice, she gives you a number to call as soon as you arrive, but tells you to stay in your car. The doctor, she says, will come to you.”

And then

“You’re there in 30 minutes, unshowered and wearing sweatpants, with your daughter bundled up and shivering in her pajamas and your son fussing in his car seat. You call the office. From the car, you cannot see the sign on the pediatrician’s office door instructing patients with a list of symptoms, like your daughter’s, not to come inside. Flashes of the pandemic play back as you see the pediatrician and two nurses approaching in the rearview mirror wearing N95 masks. It hits you: This is not the flu. This is not chicken pox. This is serious.”

If that isn’t gutting enough to make me weep, there’s a twist.

This is exhausting, enervating stuff.

Climate change in our house

logy

We have experienced climate change in our house. Like many folks, we’ve dealt with a heat wave in our neck of the woods, with temperatures in the upper 80s and low 90s Fahrenheit (30-35C), often with high humidity.

It’s not bad on the first floor. Our front window holds an air conditioner, and it makes our living room, kitchen, and hallway pretty comfortable. I don’t enjoy it when my wife uses the oven during this time—that’s why Allah invented cold cereal, fruit salads, and takeout—but even then, it’s not too oppressive close to the AC.

Going upstairs, however, is a different environment, and I mean that literally. I get to Step 3 from the first floor and feel it’s getting warmer. By Step 6, it has become oppressive. Our bedroom is oppressive; on July 11 at 7 a.m., it was 89F. My office had been OK in the morning, at least until about 9:30 or 10:00. But when it doesn’t cool off overnight, it is oppressive even if I keep the door closed and the fan on.

There have always been elements of this in the house, but it’s harder to cope with in 2024. Is it worse this year, or has my heat tolerance declined? It’s likely both.

Too Darn Hot

I was trying to do much of my writing downstairs when my wife and daughter weren’t about. Alternatively, I would go to the Albany Public Library, which has Wi-Fi and air conditioning. That doesn’t always work out when there’s a queue, particularly at the Pine Hills branch of the library.

One day, I went there at 1:30 but couldn’t get a room until 4:30, so I listened to albums on YouTube while typing on my laptop. (The mix of the tracks on the UK album Aftermath by the Rolling Stones doesn’t sound like my CD.) The library computer would periodically message, “Are you still there? The computer will shut down…”

New York State has a couple of programs designed to provide free air conditioners to people with certain economic requirements. In this environmental climate, that’s a good thing.

“Get Your Passport, Kid”

global warming became climate change

Get Your Passport, Kid is a paper my daughter wrote about me for a class during the autumn 2023 semester. I am using it with her permission. I have changed nothing substantial. I added a couple of commas, and I did create some subheads. Oh, and subsequently, she HAS applied for her passport, and received it less than a month later!

I recently had a conversation with Mr. Roger Green, my father. I chose him because he has lived a long life (70 years!), he is my eldest living family member who still has a reliable memory, and because he has a blog(!), so if there’s anything he’s a bit foggy on, he can look back at his own ramblings and re-enlighten himself. Both of us, plus my mother, also tend to agree that my father and I are very similar. I hope to channel his long-time blogger energy into my writings.

We had planned an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting one afternoon, but he ended up accidentally pocket-dialing me a few minutes early on Facebook Messenger while he walked home from the bus stop. When he finally heard me, he took out his phone and showed me his walk past my elementary school in the neighborhood I grew up in, back to the house I lived in my whole life until coming to college here. It was a nice reminder of the place I call home, and I got to talk to my cats.

Hometown

My father was born in Binghamton, New York, which, like most upstate New York cities, has fairly temperate weather with hot summers and cold winters. Roger went to SUNY New Paltz for his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, having him relocated to another upstate city, New Paltz, New York with the same subtle climate. And later he moved to Albany, New York, his third upstate city and final destination, where he settled down and lived for the past 40 years since attending SUNY Albany for his Master of Library Science degree. Having lived in three similar cities his whole life, none of which had much extreme weather -hot or cold- I asked him to focus on the landscape, architecture, and his environment.

Starting off my uber-professional interview with Roger I ask him about where it all began: Binghamton’s First Ward, 1953. Roger lived with his mother and father and two younger sisters in a two-family house with his paternal grandparents living on the top floor, in a home owned by his maternal grandmother. His maternal grandmother lived a few blocks away on Prospect Hill, the home he and his sisters would walk to for lunch break during school since their mother was out working. Their neighborhood was filled with big, old, multi-family houses near the banks of both the Chenango and the Susquehanna Rivers. Roger and his sisters would often walk by the Spring Forest Cemetery, where many of their relatives were buried. The Trinity AME Zion church my father’s family attended was located on Lydia St., a name that would come up again when it was time to name his first and only child.

Being black in the hometown

I wanted to know if being a black family affected how they experienced their landscape as well. Surprisingly to me, Roger seemed to feel that even though they grew up in a predominantly white area, he and his siblings didn’t encounter significant interpersonal racist interactions, as it was a somewhat progressive neighborhood. However, their race, or more specifically, perceived race, made their family unable to buy or rent their own house. Roger’s mother, while black, was very fair-skinned and was often unintentionally white-passing, while his father was dark-skinned and unambiguously black. This reality caused Roger’s parents to be viewed as an interracial couple, and in the 1950s and ‘60s, this meant no one wanted to sell or rent to them. Homeownership is, in my opinion, one of the first steps in building generational wealth, and if they did want to move, making that happen was unattainable at the time. Knowing Roger’s family wasn’t well off, it’s fair to assume that that affected how they went about their business. He tells me their vacations were never very far away. Sometimes, he, his sister, and their father would sing as their family group at the campsites they frequented rather than having to pay.

Climate

I did want to swing back around to the weather topic, and as I predicted, he didn’t have immediate terrible weather memories, but here are some unusual weather moments he could think of:

Albany’s worst snowstorm (in Roger’s lifetime), October 4th, 1987 – not heavy but early in the season, and with leaves still on the trees, many branches were brought down, and thousands were without power for days.
Bad snowstorm, March 1993 – 20+ inches of snow
May snow, May 18th, 2002 – my mother’s college graduation ceremony was moved to an indoor venue because of the unexpected spring snow
Hot, hot, hot, early 2000s – sent home from work because of the heat, and the company didn’t want to pay for all that air conditioning.
Valentine’s Day snowstorm, February 14th, 2007 – The buses stopped running early, and Roger barely made it home. The Albany area got 1-3 feet of snow, which froze over the next day.

The bus

Next, I asked Roger what changes he has made due to climate change. Roger is a Capital District Transit Authority (CDTA) bus rider, which of course I knew since I lived with him for 18 years, and the man can’t drive, what else would he do? But I didn’t know how much of a CDTA advocate he was. He attended CDTA town halls and responded to their surveys. He is always willing to help people figure out what route or bus stop they need, how to secure their bike to the front bike rack on the bus, how to get a Navigator (refillable bus pass), and whatever people need to feel comfortable using the CDTA. Roger has also signed petitions to create safer bike lanes in Albany.

I was somewhat excited to get to our interview’s climate change talk section. I knew some of my dad’s fundamental beliefs and that he’s left-leaning, but since I haven’t lived at home in a bit, we hadn’t had the random world/political conversations I was used to in middle and high school.

Q&A

Question: What are the causes and effects of climate change?

Answer: “Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes hot things hotter and leads to biodiversity loss; sea animals move differently because of warmer water, and islands will disappear due to rising waters.”

Question: Who do you usually talk to about climate change?

Answer: Like-minded people, friends, political allies, liberals.

Question: Do you follow climate news?

Answer: “Yes, liberal and conservative.”

Question: Are you involved in community groups that deal with climate change?

Answer: “No, not really. (What about the church and the library?) “Well, yes, I am part of groups that support climate action but not part of groups that specifically address climate change.”

Question: When did you start hearing about climate change or global warming?

Answer: “I heard about global warming in the ‘70s. It became climate change into the ‘80s because that was ‘less offensive.’ You’d have one colder-than-usual day, and all the global warming deniers would come out. So they changed it to ‘climate change.’ But overall, if you look at the data, “the globe is getting warmer; climate change is a wussy term!”

The librarian questions

Question: You worked with SBDC and SUNY Research Foundation. People would call you, and you’d answer their questions. Did you get any global warming questions?

Answer: “Later on. I was there for 26 years (1992 – 2019). In the first 15, absolutely not. In probably the last 10 or 12 years, yes. It’d be like, ‘What are the best fuels we should use to do what we want to do?’ Or finding the energy that would have the least ecological impact. Or taking a substance, like cooking oil, and using it as fuel. I think people’s awareness of it had grown so that people realized that maybe they could do something about it. ‘We can start a business to be more carbon neutral.'”

Question: What do you think about the climate and the planet’s health?

Answer: “I think we are in desperate straits.”

Question: What are you most worried about in relation to climate change?

Answer: “Mostly denial; it makes me terribly worried. You can’t fix it if you don’t think it’s a problem.” He was the most unnerved and ranty during this section. Climate change and global warming denial is worrying and anti-Christian.

Ending

At the end of our interview, I was reading off the post-conversation questions meant for me to answer on my own. “Did anything surprise you?” I asked myself out loud to get down any notations before they slipped my mind. Roger started to respond, “Well, what did surprise me…” I cut him off, “That’s a question for me, not you,” I responded. “Well, I want to answer it.” Okay, my bad.

“What surprised me was I hadn’t really thought about how limited my geographic parameters had been when I was growing up. Growing up in Binghamton, I think my world experience was encompassed by New York and Pennsylvania. I don’t think we ever even went to New England or Ohio.” This turned into a lecture about me getting my passport renewed (again). “That’s why I really want you to get your passport and travel when you can. It’s a very enriching experience.”

Roger and I grew up in and currently live in a small region of the world with his life path is Binghamton, New Paltz, and Albany, and mine is Albany and Amherst. In a later call, I mentioned that my friend and I wanted to study abroad. He was very supportive of that, and he restated his wish for me to get my passport so that I could see more of the world than he did. This aspect has been the most meaningful part of the conversation for me.