Last House Standing: Mexico Beach Resident Who Radically Overbuilt His Home Calls Out Climate Liars

[hatrack]

Sand Palace, Russell King’s House in Mexico Beach.


Owners of a home built to the latest building code in Mexico Beach, Florida, retrieve belongings from the top two stories that were pushed by Michael’s storm surge onto Highway 98.

In Mexico Beach, Florida, Russell King’s house is the only beachfront property that survived Hurricane Michael with little damage. But the fact it survived the latest record-breaking hurricane doesn’t give King peace of mind. Can it withstand the next storm that comes its way?

Climate scientists predict that storms will continue to intensify, and King takes this to heart, worrying the next one could take down his house. I met King on October 14, four days after Hurricane Michael made landfall and wiped out a large portion of Mexico Beach, a small town on Florida’s panhandle. The storm swept into the area with winds of up to 155 miles per hour (mph), just two shy of reaching a Category 5 storm designation.

King’s home, which he owns with his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, was built to withstand 240 mph winds, well beyond the standards of the current building code. Nearby houses built to the latest code all sustained substantial damage. Most of those still standing will likely need to be torn down. About a mile east on Highway 98, the main road along the coast, the top two floors of a four-story house moved from the beach to the road. The bottom floors were obliterated.

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“I’m tired of politicians lying to us. The American people need to understand they are lying,” King said. “The people who are denying climate change are not telling the truth.” He likened the misinformation campaign against climate science to the campaign to protect the tobacco industry, which claimed cigarettes were no threat to human health. He was well aware that the fossil fuel industry is using the same tobacco industry playbook and lobbyists to sow doubt about climate change. “There is nothing clean about coal,” King said, just like there is nothing healthy about smoking cigarettes.

EDIT

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/21/mexico-beach-house-hurricane-michael-trump-climate-denier-politicians

[underpants]

1. Good for Russell King on many accounts.

Thanks for posting this.

I'd posted about the house before.

[underpants]

2. It looks like it also protected the house behind from at least some damage

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[dhill926]

3. K & R....

[riversedge]

4. Is Climate Science Denial Leading to Human Rights Violations, Asks Philippines Commission

We need this to occur in the USA--but will not happen until we rid ourselves of greedy, @GOP politicians!


Is Climate Science Denial Leading to Human Rights Violations, Asks Philippines Commission
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/20/climate-science-denial-human-rights-violations-asks-philippines-commission


Read time: 3 mins

By Guest • Saturday, October 20, 2018 - 05:34

By Kert Davies, Climate Investigations Center. Originally posted on Climate Investigations Center.

As climate change liability — who is to blame — increasingly lands in courtrooms around the globe, the Philippines Commission on Human Rights is taking a different and unique approach, investigating climate change impacts as a human rights infringement. The commission has held a series of hearings this year to investigate the role of fossil fuel companies (also known as “carbon majors“) in causing climate change, concealing climate science, delaying policy solutions, and facilitating the climate crisis of the Filipino people.

The most recent session was held in New York City on September 27-28, 2018, bringing together experts from a range of backgrounds including environmental law, human rights law, climate science, and public policy. The next session will be held in London this November.

Notably, no representatives for fossil fuel companies showed up at the New York hearing, though private law firms were apparently present in the audience.

I was invited to present on the growing body of evidence documenting fossil fuel companies’ legacy of climate denial. I presented case studies on the following areas of research:

What we now know fossil fuel companies knew about climate science decades ago
What those companies, their trade associations, and front groups did to obstruct climate change policy on the state, federal, and international level
Evidence that fossil fuel companies paid millions of dollars to surrogate and spokes-scientists to spread climate science denial and misinformation.

Full presentation and follow-up questions from the commission:

Referencing numerous “hard to find” documents now hosted on our Climate Files platform, our presentation covered multiple case studies of recent revelations of fossil fuel companies’ internal scientific investigations of climate change, dating back to the 1980s and beyond.

Documents highlighted in the presentation provided specific evidence of corporate funding of climate denial campaigns and entities that perpetuated climate science disinformation. The presentation outlined coordinated efforts by corporate entities and their trade associations to oppose national greenhouse gas reduction measures and to destabilize the UNFCCC process. It also detailed CIC’s latest research on the increasing funding by ExxonMobil of denial campaigns and organizations from the late 1990s into the mid 2000s, funding which continues to this day.........................