Rising sea levels and national security

Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in Virginia, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage': “Every year you wait to make decisions and take actions, the risk goes up," said retired Rear Adm. Jonathan White.

"If a Category 4 hurricane made landfall at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the storm surge could be greater than 9 feet in places,"- NOAA

This echo article has been jointly published by NBCNews.com and InsideClimate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. By Nicholas Kusnetz.

PORTSMOUTH, Va.(And Norfolk VA) — At the foot of the Chesapeake Bay in southeast Virginia lies a Naval shipyard older than the nation itself. One of the country’s first warships was built here in 1799. So was the first battleship, and decades later the first aircraft carrier.

Over the past three centuries, Norfolk Naval Shipyard has been blockaded and burned to the ground, only to be rebuilt again and again. Today, it’s one of four Navy shipyards that maintain the nation’s nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, which enable the Pentagon to respond quickly to military and humanitarian crises across the globe.

But the shipyard now faces its greatest existential threat: rising seas and extreme weather driven by climate change.

In the past 10 years, Norfolk Naval Shipyard has suffered nine major floods that have damaged equipment used to repair ships, and the flooding is worsening, according to the Navy. 

In 2016, rain from Hurricane Matthew left 2 feet of water in one building, requiring nearly $1.2 million in repairs.

And that wasn’t even a direct hit — the most immediate worry, former military leaders say, is a strong storm that blows right through the area.

“It would have the potential for serious, if not catastrophic damage, and it would certainly put the shipyard out of business for some amount of time,” said Ray Mabus, who was the Navy secretary under President Barack Obama. “That has implications not just for the shipyard, but for us, for the Navy.”

Among the shipyard’s greatest vulnerabilities are its five dry docks, which are waterside basins that can be sealed and pumped dry to expose a ship’s hull for repairs. Once inside, vessels are often cut open, leaving expensive mechanical systems vulnerable to damage from storms and flooding.

The dry docks “were not designed to accommodate the threats” of rising seas and stronger storms, according to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office. 

Navy officials warned the government watchdog agency that flooding in a dry dock could cause “catastrophic damage to the ships.”

Already, high-tide flooding is contributing to extensive delays in ship repairs, the GAO (Government Accounting Office) said, disrupting maintenance schedules throughout the Navy’s fleet. Sea level in Norfolk has risen 1.5 feet in the past century, twice the global average, in part because the coastline is sinking.

The Navy has erected temporary flood walls and uses thousands of sandbags to protect the dry docks at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The Navy has also begun elevating some equipment, but the facility remains vulnerable, according to a Defense Department survey on the effects of extreme weather on military bases, obtained through a public records request.

In response, the Navy proposed a more permanent barrier estimated to cost more than $30 million, part of a 20-year, $21 billion plan submitted to Congress this year to modernize Norfolk as well as Navy shipyards in Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

But the new projects have yet to be approved.

The Navy said it takes extensive measures to limit damage from flooding. “These requirements ensure the safety of our personnel, our ships (nuclear and non-nuclear), and shipyard infrastructure," William M. Couch, a Navy spokesman, said in an email.

In October, Hurricane Michael offered a glimpse of what can happen to coastal military bases in a storm’s path when it leveled much of Tyndall Air Force Base, damaging more than a dozen stealth fighters undergoing maintenance.

Months earlier, the Federal Emergency Management Agency envisioned what might occur if a similar storm were to strike Norfolk — by driving a computer-simulated Category 4 hurricane directly into the region as part of a national disaster preparedness drill. Their simulated cyclone’s 140-mph winds snapped power lines and cell towers, hobbling the grid and communications, and whipped the Chesapeake Bay into a 12-to-15-foot storm surge, high enough to flood the downtowns of nearby cities.

The Navy declined to disclose the precise damage to the shipyard in the scenario, but a news release described the aftermath as “New Orleans without the levee system.” 

National hazard maps show a storm of that magnitude would likely submerge the entire facility.

“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when,” said retired Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn, who was assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment until January 2017. “And when it hits, how vulnerable are we going to be, and are we going to be standing there saying, ‘oh, we woulda, coulda, shoulda?’”
Limited time, little progress

The Navy has long understood the stakes of global warming. It has many coastal facilities, and its forces are often first on the scene of humanitarian emergencies triggered by extreme weather.

A decade ago, the Navy commissioned the National Research Council to study the risks climate change poses to its ability to respond to these crises and keep the country safe. 

Moreover, the 2011 report said a thawing Arctic would stress the military’s fleet by opening a vast new arena to police in particularly harsh conditions. The report also found that 56 Naval facilities worth a combined $100 billion would be threatened if sea level rose about 3 feet.

In fact, the report warned that the Navy needed to begin protecting the most vulnerable facilities immediately, and had only 10 to 20 years to begin work on the rest. Seven years later, there’s been little progress, said retired Rear Adm. Jonathan White, who led the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change before retiring in 2015.

“Many of those recommendations, most if not all, have gone unanswered,” he said. “Every year you wait to make decisions and take actions, the risk goes up. And I think the expense also goes up.”

Across the military, the response to climate change has been piecemeal and inadequate, according to interviews with more than a dozen retired officers and former senior-ranking national security officials.

“It’s probably on the radar, but it’s below what we would call the cut line,” said retired Rear Adm. David W. Titley, who initiated the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change in 2009. Senior officers spend their days fielding urgent requests for money and resources, he said, and have little left for long-term threats. “That’s probably how it’s looked at: ‘Yes this is a problem, but I still see the shipyard out there,’ and so it gets kicked down the road.”

The Navy has begun protecting bases here and there, elevating critical equipment like generators and creating “micro-grids” at some facilities to make electrical supply more resilient to storms. And perhaps most critically, Congress passed legislation this year requiring any military construction in a 100-year floodplain be elevated at least 2 feet above the expected flood level.

But even if some of the work the Navy plans to undertake receives funding, it may be inadequate. A flood wall to protect the most vulnerable dry docks at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, for example, will (OMG Maine Writer "Woah!" expensive wasted effort?) not be built to the more stringent standards once considered — the so-called 500-year flood, with only a 0.2 percent chance of occuring in any year. Instead, it’s a foot and a half lower, designed to protect against a 100-year flood, which probably isn’t enough to prevent flooding in a Category 4 hurricane. Climate change is already making severe storms more frequent, and a few decades from now, when the seas will be 1 or 2 feet higher, a smaller storm would inflict the same amount of damage.

(Disaster!) Managing climate change under Trump

Even when commanders take climate change seriously, politics and legislative gridlock can block funding. “My experience was, the thing that Congress is most likely to do is not fund it until it becomes a crisis,” said Mabus, the former Navy secretary. “And then it might be too late.”

Addressing climate change has become more difficult under President Donald Trump, who said recently that he thought climate scientists had a political agenda. Trump's administration omitted climate change in its first National Security Strategy, and, worse! he rescinded an Obama executive order that sought to provide intelligence analysts with current climate science to better monitor global hotspots.

In this environment, military officials have become reluctant to work openly on climate change, said Joan VanDervort, former deputy director for Ranges, Sea and Airspace at the Pentagon. “They try to stay away from the words ‘climate change,’ and use words like ‘natural resources’ and ‘resiliency’ and terms like ‘weather,’ ‘hurricanes,’” she said. When you omit “climate change as a priority related to our national security,” she added, “it’s very difficult to get funding.”

When asked about the Navy’s response to climate change at the shipyards, a spokesman pointed to comments Defense Secretary James Mattis made last year: “The Department should be prepared to mitigate any consequences of a changing climate, including ensuring that our shipyards and installations will continue to function as required.”

Navy officials declined to be interviewed. In emails, Couch said that "flooding concerns were a major consideration for Norfolk Naval Shipyard in evaluating necessary work," and that the Navy has "identified some near-term projects that mitigate concerns related to rising seas and flooding," including raising equipment and building flood walls.

Like sinking a ship

All of the nation’s 69 submarines and 11 aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered. They help project the military’s might across the globe, but nuclear power has a drawback: The ships can be repaired at only a handful of facilities with the equipment and personnel to handle radiological material. 

Of the Navy’s four shipyards, only two can dry-dock aircraft carriers: Puget Sound in Washington state and Norfolk.

In two reports — from 2014 and last year — the GAO cited officials at Norfolk and an unnamed shipyard who warned that flooding from storms posed a threat to ships undergoing maintenance. In one case, they were preparing to cut a submarine in half and were concerned that “if salt water was allowed to flood the submarine’s systems, it could result in severe damage.”

The Navy explained in an email that it has measures to prevent that type of accident. When a major storm is approaching, it said, workers can quickly seal up ships undergoing repairs, allowing them to refill the dry dock and float the vessel.

That’s what the shipyard did to the submarine USS Wyoming as Hurricane Florence headed toward Norfolk in September, the Navy said.

But,  Florence veered into the Carolinas, sparing Norfolk.

Cyclones/hurricanes

But recent flooding has worsened already poor conditions at Norfolk, the GAO said. Most capital equipment infrastructure at the shipyards, such as cranes and other core machinery, is beyond its effective service life and obsolete, according to a Navy report provided to Congress this year. The shipyards have suffered extensive maintenance delays because of deteriorating conditions and other factors, with nearly 14,000 lost days of operations for the submarines and aircraft carriers between 2000 and 2016, according to the GAO.

Mabus, the former Navy secretary, said these delays ripple throughout the fleet’s carefully choreographed maintenance schedule, which means ships may not be ready when they’re needed. “It’s a very, very serious readiness issue,” he said.

Without a tremendous investment in protections, Mabus and others said, the Pentagon will have to hope that disaster does not strike. Hurricane season is nearly over, but nor’easters can bring storm surges just as high.

Michael Flynn admitted guilt but now the fake AG William Barr says not so fast!

This is the fact: Retired senior army officer Mike Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI. Full stop!

NewYorkTimes headline (echo modified): A former federal judge John Gleeson said that the (bogus!) attorney general William Barr gave special treatment to Flynn, who is presidential ally, thereby undermining public confidence in the rule of law.

ABCNews:  Appointed outside judge in Michael Flynn case blasts the Justice Department for 'gross abuse' of power. Moreover, the judge also argued that Flynn committed perjury by reneging on his guilty plea.

Head table! Seated at the head table of a gala celebrating the tenth anniversary of Russia Today in December of 2015 included Russian President Vladimir Putin and American retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. (NBCNews photo.)

Echo report by Alexander Mallin published in ABCNews.

The ex-judge appointed in former national security adviser Michael Flynn's criminal case ripped into the Justice Department Wednesday in a lengthy filing that accuses Flynn of committing perjury and alleges the DOJ's unusual reversal in the case amounts to a "gross abuse of prosecutorial power."

"The Government has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President," said retired federal judge John Gleeson, who in a controversial move last month was tasked by district judge Emmet Sullivan to present arguments against the department.

"The Department of Justice has a solemn responsibility to prosecute this case—like every other case—without fear or favor and, to quote the Department’s motto, solely 'on behalf of justice,'" Gleeson continued. "It has abdicated that responsibility through a gross abuse of prosecutorial power, attempting to provide special treatment to a favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States. It has treated the case like no other, and in doing so has undermined the public’s confidence in the rule of law."

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing, but is currently appealing Sullivan's refusal to dismiss the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering whether to overrule Sullivan and throw out the case.

In his 73-page argument, Gleeson states his belief that Flynn "has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings, for which he deserves punishment," referring to Flynn's previous sworn statements in court in which he admitted lying to FBI agents who interviewed him at the White House in January 2017.

But Gleeson recommends that the court not move forward with a separate prosecution case against Flynn for committing perjury and instead "take Flynn’s perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted guilt."

"This approach—rather than a separate prosecution for perjury or contempt—aligns with the Court’s intent to treat this case, and this Defendant, in the same way it would any other," Gleeson writes.

Gleeson's motion repeatedly excoriates the conduct of the Justice Department over its sudden move to withdraw the charges and specifically its contention that it can no longer prove Flynn "knowingly and willfully made a false statement" in his interview with the FBI.

"Even recognizing that the Government is entitled to deference in assessing the strength of its case, these claims are not credible. Indeed, they are preposterous," Gleeson writes. "For starters—and most unusually—they are directly and decisively disproven by the Government’s own briefs filed just months ago in this very proceeding. They are also plainly inconsistent with prior orders of this Court, which constitute law of the case."

After appointing a U.S. attorney to review the FBI's initial handling of the case, Attorney General William Barr said that newly uncovered evidence detailing the conduct of agents who investigated Flynn led him to conclude their counter-intelligence probe was not legitimate, and that his lies were thus not "material" to any legitimate investigation.

Sullivan has set a schedule up that stretches into mid-July for Flynn's team and Gleeson to present counter arguments to one another, with an in-person argument between the parties currently set for July 16.

He has separately hired outside representation to argue against Flynn's lawyers in their request currently before the D.C. circuit to drop the case.

Donald Trump and his "Mexican will pay for wall" fiasco

This summary echo, published in the September 20, 2019 edition of The Week, highlights the disastrous and false promise, made by Donald Trump, during his rhetorical, "Who will pay for the wall?", campaign speeches.  This article is published in Best Columns: The U.S....

Now, we see the "collateral damage" of Donald Trump's obsession with building a border wall, said The Washington Post in an editorial.

Trump is seizing $3.6 billion in congressionally approved military construction funds to build 450 miles of wall in defiance of Congress, using the dubious national emergency he declared at the sotuehrn border as legal justification. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars alloted to build and renovate schools for children on American military bases.  "Sorry, kids, Mr. Trump wants his wall- the one it turns out Mexico is not paying for." 

"I will build a great wall -- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me --and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Donald Trump "dumb quotes".

Planned improvements at the U.S. Military Academy's engineering center have also been scrapped. All told, 127 projects have been effectively defunded in nearly half the sates. America's overseas territories and bases have been hit the hardest. Puerto Rico will lose $400 million ear marked for five hurricane repair projects.  "More than $700 million was snateched from sites in Europe, mainly for projects designed to protect the continent from Russian aggression."

So far, most Republican lawmakers have sheepishley accepted Trump's blatant power grab.  This sets a terrible precedent. Someday, A Democratic president will seize defense funds or farm subsidies for his or her own pet projects.

NBCNews report by Courtney Kube - Trump's plan to pay for border wall with Air Force funds risks national security, report says.

The report, compiled by the U.S. Air Force and obtained by NBC News, details the importance of each of the 51 military projects chosen by the Trump administration to lose their funding.

Plan to pay for border wall with Air Force funds risks national security, report says.

Maine Writer post script- In other words, American tax payers are paying for Donald Trump's stupid border wall.

Second child Felipe Alonzo-Gomez dies in US custody

Customs and Border Protection announces changes after second child dies in custody

The final days of Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, the 8-year-old migrant who died in US custody

NBCNews by Rachel Elbaum

An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died of unknown causes in custody minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve in New Mexico, the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

After the 8-year-old boy’s death, the agency said in a statement late Tuesday that Border Patrol would now conduct “secondary medical checks” on all children in custody, with a focus on children under the age of 10. It was not clear from the statement how and where those checks would be conducted.

It is considering requesting additional medical assistance from other agencies — including Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense — and coordinating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the numbers of children in custody, the statement said.

The agency said it is also reviewing how it holds immigrants in custody so it can relieve problems with capacity in its centers in the El Paso, Texas, area.

With border crossings surging, CBP processes thousands of children — both alone and with their parents — every month.

The federal government is currently partially shut down because of a dispute between President Donald Trump and Congress over his demand for a border wall. 

Sadly, cruel Trump dug in on the issue Tuesday, telling reporters that the U.S. must have "a wall, a fence, whatever they'd like to call it."

He also insisted that the wall — through renovations and new contracts — is actually already scheduled to be built and refurbished*. He claimed that 115 miles of wall was set to be constructed in Texas, and that he would visit the border at the end of January for a groundbreaking ceremony.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, identified the boy who died on Christmas Eve as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez. 

He was first taken into custody with his father 3 miles outside of El Paso on Dec. 18, according to the CBP (US Customs and Border Patrol) statement, which included a timeline of the child’s last day in custody.

Castro, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, credited CBP for its timely public notification but also blamed the Trump administration's broader immigration policy for putting migrants in harm's way.

"The Administration’s policy of turning people away from legal ports of entry, otherwise known as metering, is putting families and children in great danger," Castro said in a statement.

*Any contractor who works on this wall is stupid, without having the Congressional approval for funding of the construction.

Donald Trump and health care

"...if Americans continue to get better access to health insurance, their health should start to improve", the Commonwealth Fund.

One thing we know about Donald Trump and his rich family is this- none of them every worry about how to pay for their health care. Therefore, it is irresponsible for the presumptive Presidential Elect (who still has not achieved a majority of the popular election vote) to be so brash as to call for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the ACA also known as "Obamacare" allows people who otherwise would never have health insurance to access and to pay for this essential coverage.

Rich people always have access to health care but the rest of us are at the mercy of public policy gurus who are often influenced by insurance lobbyists.  Meanwhile, the health of an American lags behind other countries where access to care is supported by public policy.

NBCNews reports: United States Comes in Last Again on Health, Compared to Other Countries by MAGGIE FOX

Americans still struggle with their health, and rank last against citizens of 10 other wealthy countries when it comes to emotional distress, struggling to pay for care and skipping doctor visits, a new report finds.

The latest report from the Commonwealth Fund, which routinely points to the shortcomings of the U.S. healthcare system, shows not much has changed in 15 years or longer. Americans still pay far more for medical care than people in other rich Western nations but have little to show for all that spending.

The group surveyed 26,863 adults from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

It found 43 percent of low-income Americans went without medical care because of costs. In the other countries, these rates ranged from 8 percent in Britain to 31 percent in Switzerland.

(What many Americans fail to realize is how the cost of providing health care to the low income Americans is absorbed by tax payers when this population inevitably seeks emergency care due to lack of having primary care.)

"In comparison to adults in the other 10 countries, adults in the United States are sicker and more economically disadvantaged," the report reads.

"The United States trailed other countries in making health care affordable and ranked poorly on providing timely access to medical care (except specialist care)," the report reads. "Problems were often particularly acute for low-income adults."

Yet Americans now spend $9,523 per person a year on medical expenses — by far the most among developed countries. Health spending now tops $3 trillion a year. Health insurance premiums have been steadily rising since 2008 and employers, who cover 60 percent of Americans, have been increasing the amount their workers must contribute to their own medical care.

"The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country, but what we get for these significant resources falls short in terms of access to care, affordability, and coordination," said Commonwealth Fund President Dr. David Blumenthal.

"We can learn from what is working in other nations. If we're going to do better for our patients, we need to create a health care system that addresses the needs of everyone, especially our sickest patients, and those who struggle to make ends meet."

In fact, the weaknesses predate the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as Obamacare. It was President Barack Obama's signature legislation, but was from the beginning a compromise, broadly rejected by Republicans in Congress and criticized by liberals who wanted a single-payer system.

The law was meant to gradually lower health care costs by first getting more Americans health insurance so they could get chronic health conditions taken care of. It's gotten an estimated 20 million more covered, bringing the rate of people without health insurance down from 15 percent to under 9 percent now.

The report says it's only begun, but president-elect Donald Trump has promised to either repeal or significantly reform it.

"The major coverage expansions of the law were launched only in 2014 and are thus still in a ramping-up period," the report reads.

"In addition, there are ongoing barriers to coverage, including the fact that—as of November 2016—19 states have not chosen to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs, the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from both Marketplace and Medicaid coverage, low awareness of coverage options, and concerns about affordability among those who remain uninsured," it adds.

"An estimated 23 million adults in the United States lack health insurance, while the other countries in our survey have universal coverage."

Also, the report finds Americans are more likely than people in other countries to have more than one chronic condition such as arthritis, heart disease, asthma, high blood pressure or diabetes. It found 28 percent of Americans have multiple chronic conditions, compared to 14 percent in Britain and the Netherlands, 18 percent in France and 22 percent in Canada.

The Commonwealth Fund says its research consistently finds that providing high-quality, well-coordinated and inexpensive health coverage translates to better health overall.

"For example, the health care systems in Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have no deductibles or cost sharing for primary care; the French system exempts low-income adults and those with chronic illnesses from cost sharing; and out of-pocket spending is capped at 1 percent of income for the chronically ill in Germany and at US $123 annually in Sweden," it says.

The group's Sara Collins said if Americans continue to get better access to health insurance, their health should start to improve.

"It's really too early to know whether and how and which part of the law the new administration might address in the coming months," she told reporters.

"The hallmark of these other countries in these surveys is that everyone has health insurance."

The U.S. wasn't last on everything. The Commonwealth team found U.S. adults have timely access to specialists, with just 6 percent waiting longer than two months for an appointment. "In Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, rates were similar, ranging from 3 percent to 9 percent," the group said.

And more Americans talk with doctors about diet and exercise — 59 percent had done so in the past two years, compared to just 17 percent in France and Germany and 41 percent in Canada.

In other words, Donald Trump and his family will always have health care coverage but the rest of us must worry about what he intends to do to help the rest of us to afford what he takes for granted. Meanwhile, it's a big mistake to repeal the ACA.