Less separation between the sexes, please
Illustration from An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, by Lydia M. Child
“The fact is, reasonable and kind treatment will generally produce a great and beneficial change in vicious animals as well as in vicious men.’’
xxx
“The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home—that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wings. . . .’’
— 1843 remarks by Lydia M. Child (1802-1880), author, editor, abolitionist and defender of the rights of Native Americans. She was born in Medford, Mass., and died in Wayland, Mass.
The First Parish Church (Unitarian) in Wayland, Lydia Child’s church there.
We try to avoid it
“Self Scrutiny” (oil on canvas), by James Rauchman, in his show “Self: Reflection,’’ at River Arts in the Folley Hall Gallery, in Morrisville, Vt.
The gallery says the paintings show the Morrisville resident’s experiences “with being an outsider—a gay man and an artist—and reflect on identity within the context of a society not quite able (or ready) to accept him.” The paintings are meant to capture the artist’s identity and experience while blending the physical and abstract; external and internal.
Downtown Morrisville, Vt.
Prosperous Morrisville in 1889.
Llewellyn King: Don’t kid yourself: Solutions to global warming won't be simple
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gives humanity a simple directive: Get a grip on greenhouse-gas emissions or the dear old planet won’t be the dear old planet we have known and loved down through the millennia.
Sounds simple, huh? Like wearing a face mask or getting a COVID-19 vaccine shot.
That is the trouble. Everyone will have his or her own science and won’t hesitate to inflict it on anyone who disagrees, whether it is verified or not.
Social nagging is about to become a national pastime. I can hear it now: “Why do you drive a gasoline car? You know, your fire pit is a carbon source.” Or “Did you think about the carbon consequences when you booked your vacation in Europe?”
How ghastly the moral superiority of the anti-carbon warriors will be! I can imagine them saying “I can’t imagine why people don’t buy electric cars. We have had one for three years.” Or “Your oil-heated house is a pollution source. We have installed solar rooftop panels. Passive solar houses should be mandated by the government.”
Remember the anti-smoking crusaders? I am afraid that you haven’t seen anything yet. The very real climate threat is going to unleash a whole new tribe of social scolds.
Electric utilities are in the crosshairs and there will be no end to their vilification. Watch out for the environment experts, who once urged the use of coal over nuclear, to take charge of the future with some other counterproductive policy nostrum.
All that said, I believe if we don’t get on top of the greenhouse-gas emissions problem, we soon will be wondering, as Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire,/ Some say in ice.” The way it is going, I say the world will end in devastating floods and heat waves, worsening droughts and accelerating sea-level rise.
The U.N.’s climate change panel has declared a clear and present danger. It is a threat that has been growing and largely laughed off over 50 years. I, for one, first heard of the idea of global warming in 1970, when it seemed very remote and a little crazy. It is neither remote nor crazy now. It is at hand, and it should affect a lot of thinking.
In the near term, common sense would have us ship our natural gas abroad so that China, India and many other countries stop burning coal; not as the anti-carbon warrior would have us close down our production. The best longer-term hope is more science on carbon capture and nuclear power. It is foolish to worry about nuclear waste lasting 10,000 years when, if we keep on the current climate trajectory, life won’t exist in the nearer future on planet Earth.
The fact is that while the science of climate change is well understood, the solutions aren’t. For example, those who would denounce natural gas, which is far less polluting than coal, don’t know the lifecycle costs of the two advocated alternatives, wind and solar.
To build a windmill, you need a large concrete base and a steel tower, both of which are manufactured through carbon-intensive processes. At the end of the life of a turbine, about 25 years, the giant blades, which are mostly made of carbon fiber-reinforced fiberglass, will be disposed of in landfills. The blades can’t be recycled, unlike the steel towers and other components.
Both the manufacture and disposal of solar cells have considerable environmental impact. The impact in making them is known, but the impact of their disposal in landfills isn’t known.
Going forward, the need is to know the science, encourage innovation and not to bow to culture activists who would wish their solutions on the rest of us. When I was a boy, asbestos was the miracle substance, recommended for inclusion in everything because it was fire-resistant. If you didn’t use asbestos, the fire alarmists came down on you. The moral? Beware of simple solutions to complex problems.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Web site: whchronicle.com
Solar panels on a house in a Boston suburb. Massachusetts is very big on green energy, at least rhetorically.
— Photo by Gray Watson
Land of intimate businesses
Dan & Whit’s general store, in Norwich, Vt.
— Photo by HopsonRoad
— Vermont Congressman Peter Welch
Searching for a new world
“Metamorphic Mouse” (acrylic on canvas), by Stephen Beccia, in his joint show with Richard Cross at the Loading Dock Gallery, Lowell, Mass., through Aug. 29.
The gallery says the show “explores contemporary figurative art, inspired by the Cubism and Pop movements of the 20th Century with the nuances, icons and mediums of the 21st.
‘‘Strong influences of Basquiat and Picasso appear in Beccia’s work in geometric shapes as well as a look at the surreal and familiar. He explains he’s ‘searching for a world of design and color that does not yet exist.’’’
Seek higher ground!
“Black Sea” (painting), by Peter Watts, in his joint show with Brenda Horowitz, “Truro & Wellfleet Motifs,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Aug. 21-Sept. 12
Training by the Boston cops
“Growing up, I think I was arrested 20-odd times by the Boston police. The good news is that I've been able to use those experiences in a lot of my roles, and that has been a blessing.’’
— Mark Wahlberg (born in 1971). The movie actor and businessman was born and raised in Boston’s then mostly gritty Dorchester neighborhood, before gentrification moved in.
Brown University’s big ambitions for cancer center
Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence, is the flagship institution of the Brown University-affiliated Lifespan hospital chain.
— Photo by by Kenneth C. Zirkel
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“Brown University has partnered with a local hospital chain with the goal of establishing a state-of-the art cancer-research center in Rhode Island. The university’s research branch has partnered with Lifespan Cancer Institute’s clinical care, with the eventual goal of applying for a National Cancer Institute designation. Such a designation would allow for further funding and increase the type and amount of clinical trials the research institute could conduct.
“Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, the director of the Cancer Center at Brown University, recently spoke to The Boston Globe about his excitement for the development of this program at the university. ‘There really wasn’t too much development yet before [the center] at Brown because there was no story,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t a program… to really make a difference and get to where we need to go, we have to grow. We need to recruit, we need space, and we need resources. And now, with Brown’s support, all of that is really coming together,’ he told The Globe.
“As this program grows, there is optimism that Rhode Island could become a prime cancer-care destination. The program is expected to soon start attracting brilliant individuals who seek to advance the future of medicine and cancer care. This program aims to establish the Ocean State a top location for research, learning, and care.’’
‘Every stone is a skull’
Oak Grove Cemetery, Bath, Maine.
— Photo by Seasider53
“Here, in Maine, every stone is a skull and you live close to your own death. Where, you ask yourself, where indeed will I be buried? That is the power of those old villages: to remind you of stasis.’’
— Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) in The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick. She spent much time in Castine, Maine, during summers, especially during her marriage to poet Robert Lowell.
‘Enlarging loneliness’
“Summer’,’ by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1573
Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.
No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now
— Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), of Amherst, Mass.
‘Even in Massachusetts’
“The Dance Class,’’ by Edgar Degas, 1874
“The average parent may, for example, plant an artist or fertilize a ballet dancer and end up with a certified public accountant. We cannot train children along chicken wire to make them grow in the right direction. Tying them to stakes is frowned up, even in Massachusetts.’’
— Ellen Goodman (born in 1941), Boston Globe columnist.
'Balance in disorder'
“Ever Radiate the Truth Ever” (mixed media), by McKay Otto, in the show “Unconscious Equilibrium,’’ at Atelier Newport (R.I.), Aug. 10-Sept. 12.
The gallery says:
“This featured group of artists finds balance in disorder, influences in opposing forces, harmony in mundane daily tasks, and transcendent practices during chaos. In quiet solitude, these artists gain balance during a time when our world would suggest otherwise.
“Upon further reflection on meditation, and transcendence, the work on view finds a harmony through tessellations, a regular pattern made up of flat shapes repeated and joined together without any gaps or overlaps. These shapes do not all need to be the same, but the pattern should repeat. This work attempts to reflect these rhythmic, natural developing and reoccurring patterns in nature, reflected in tidal and gravitational forces, and how we as humans, react to with these powerful shifts - seasons, moons, tides —and our delicate balance.’’
Chris Powell: Bathos in Bridgeport
“Iranistan,’’ Bridgeport boy and circus impresario P.T. Barnum’s grandiose structure in the city survived only a decade before being destroyed by fire in 1857.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut's top elected officials quickly accommodated themselves to the disgrace of Joe Ganim's return to the mayoralty in Bridgeport in 2015 despite his having served eight years in prison upon conviction in federal court for vast corruption in office.
After all, just a year after Ganim was sent away in 2003, Gov. John G. Rowland resigned and pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges as well. Rowland was a Republican and Ganim a Democrat, so together they more or less normalized and bipartisanized betrayal of public office.
Of course, no one in state government could have refused to deal with Ganim in his return as mayor without also disenfranchising all of Bridgeport, Connecticut's largest and most troubled city. But looking away from corruption and failure in Bridgeport, as state government long has been doing, has become a betrayal in itself.
The city's newspaper, the Connecticut Post, notes that federal prosecutors have charged five Bridgeport officials with corruption in the last 10 months. The city's former police chief, Armando Perez, and personnel director, David Dunn, close associates of Mayor Ganim, pleaded guilty to the rigging of the chief's test for promotion. They are in prison. State Sen. Dennis Bradley and Board of Education member Jessica Martinez are charged with campaign-finance fraud. City Councilors Michael DeFilippo is charged with absentee-ballot fraud and has resigned.
The problem in Bridgeport isn't something in the city's water supply. (More than water, Ganim drank expensive wine extorted from city contractors, among other “gifts.”) More likely the problem arises from a lack of political competition in the overwhelmingly Democratic city, the ease of fooling impoverished and disengaged constituents, the corner-cutting hunger for government employment that grows amid poverty -- and the indifference of the governor, state legislators, prosecutors and civic leaders.
For it is hard to find anyone in authority who has spoken out about corruption and failure in Bridgeport, even as there is speculation that federal prosecutors are pursuing more corruption.
The cheating on the police chief test was done to secure the job for Perez, the mayor's crony, and while it may be hard to prove that Ganim directed or knew of the cheating, it is hard to believe that he had no hint about it.
The election fraud charges pending against the other three Bridgeport officials can't be tied to the mayor, but violating election law has become a tradition in Bridgeport.
The attitude at the state Capitol seems to be to keep throwing money at Bridgeport and Connecticut's other troubled cities without ever auditing them for results. This causes unaccountability and colossal waste. No one in authority seems bothered that fantastic amounts appropriated over many years have yet to diminish poverty and mayhem or improve school performance in Bridgeport and the other cities. Contenting the government class that presides over chronic failure seems to be enough.
Has anyone in authority in state government ever contemplated what Bridgeport's restoration of Ganim said about the city -- its demoralization and desperation?
But now with so many corruption charges being brought in Bridgeport in such a short time, someone in authority in state government should be asking why only federal prosecutors investigate such offenses. Have the state police and state prosecutors been given confidential instructions or advice to avoid looking into corruption in state and municipal government? Or are they just afraid or incompetent?
For its own sake as well as the state's, Bridgeport should be under perpetual investigation by a special team of state auditors. But is such investigation impossible under a Democratic state administration because Bridgeport sends the largest delegation to Democratic state conventions and produces enormous pluralities for the party?
If that's why corruption and failure in Bridgeport draw no concern from state government, Democrats are the party of corruption in Connecticut.
After all, Republicans have no power in the state, and while denouncing Donald Trump makes Democrats feel good about themselves, Trump isn't president anymore and bashing him won't clean up Bridgeport or correct any expensive policy failures.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
‘Abused by a race of fiends’
“In the end, Harriet Beecher Stowe looked at the phenomenon of slavery through the clean moral categories of the Yankee reformer, and what she saw was a race of children being abused by a race of fiends.’’
— Andrew DelBanco, in Required Reading (1997). Stowe, the writer and abolitionist who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was born in Litchfield, Conn. (now a rich exurb and weekend place of New York City), and died in Hartford, where Mark Twain was a neighbor. He wrote of her in her later years:
“Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.’’
Commercial blocks on West Street in Litchfield, Conn.
—Photo by Joe Mabel
Hot colors, cold water
“Lake Sky” (oil on canvas), by Kate Graham Heyd, in Galatea Fine Art’s (Boston) August show, “New England Collective XI.’’ She lives in Hopkinton, Mass., which is most famous as the starting point of the Boston Marathon and of the Charles River.
Llewellyn King: Resilience is the key word now as utilities face increasing stresses
Regional transmission organizations in the continental U.S.
— Graphic by BlckAssn
WEST WARWICK
We all know that sinking feeling when the lights flicker and go out. If bad weather has been forecast, the utility has probably sent you advance warning that there could be outages. You should have a flashlight or two handy, fuel the car, charge your cell phone and other electronic devices, take a shower, and fill all the containers you can with water. If it is winter, put extra blankets on beds and pray that the power stays on.
Disaster struck mid-February in Texas. Uri, a freak and deadly winter storm, froze the state’s power grid. It lasted an unusually long time: five terrible days.
There was chaos in Texas, including more than 150 deaths. The suffering was severe. Paula Gold-Williams, president and CEO of San Antonio-based CPS Energy, told a recent United States Energy Association (USEA) press briefing on resilience that the deep freeze was an equal opportunity disabler: Every generating source was affected. “There were no villains,” she said.
Uri wasn’t just a Texas tragedy, but also a sharp warning to the electric utility industry across the country to look to their preparedness, and to take steps to mitigate damage from cyberattacks and aberrant, extreme weather.
This is known as resilience. It is the North Star of gas and electric utility companies. They all have resilience as their goal.
But it is an elusive one, hard to quantify and one that is, by its nature, always a moving target.
This industry-wide struggle to improve resilience comes at a time when three forces are colliding, all of them impacting the electric utilities: more extreme weather; sophisticated, malicious cyberattacks; and new demands for electricity.
On the latter rests the future of smart cities, electrified transportation, autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, and even electric air taxis. The coming automation of everything -- from robotic hospital beds to data mining -- assumes a steady and uninterrupted supply of electricity.
The modern world is electric and modern cataclysm is electric failure.
Richard Mroz, a past president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, who had to deal with the havoc of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, said at the USEA press briefing, “All our expectations about our critical infrastructure, particularly our electric grid, have increased over time. We expect much more of it.”
Gold-Williams said extreme cold and extreme heat, as in Texas this year, put special pressures on the system. She said the future is a partnership with customers, and that they must understand that there are costs associated with upgrading the system and improving resilience. Currently, CPS Energy is implementing post-Uri changes, she said.
Joseph Fiksel, professor emeritus of systems engineering at Ohio State University, said at the USEA briefing that the U.S. electric system “performs at an extraordinary level of capacity” compared to other parts of the world. He said utilities must rethink how they design their systems to recognize the huge number of calamities around the world that have affected the industry.
A keen observer of the electric utility world, Morgan O’Brien, executive chairman of Anterix, a company that is helping utilities move to private broadband networks, believes communications are the vital link. He told me, “Resilience for utilities is the time in which and the means by which service is restored after ‘bad things’ happen, be they weather events of malicious meddling. Low-cost and ubiquitous sensors connected by wireless broadband technologies, are the instruments of resiliency for the modern grid. No network is so robust that failure is impossible, but a network enabled by broadband conductivity uses technology to measure the occurrence of damage and to speed the restoration of service.”
Neighborhood microgrids, fast and durable communications, diversity of generation, undergrounding critical lines, storage and cyber alertness are part of the resilience-seeking future.
As more is asked of electricity, resilience becomes a byword for keeping the fabric of the modern world intact. Or at least repairing it fast when it tears.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington,D.C.
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Co-host and Producer
"White House Chronicle" on PBS
Mobile: (202) 441-2703
Website: whchronicle.com
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‘What we most fear’
Photo by Ugglewug
“Livid to lurid switched the sky.
From west, from sunset, now the great dome
Arched eastward to lip the horizon edge,
There far, blank, pale….
What most we fear advances on
Tiptoe, breath aromatic. It smiles….’’
— From “Sky,’’ by Robert Penn Warren (1905-1909), American poet, novelist and essayist. A native of Kentucky, he spent much of his adult in Fairfield, Conn., and Stratton, Vt., where he died and is buried.
The Stratton Meetinghouse
Downward slope
Katydid, aka bush cricket
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Even with all the rain we’ve had, a few leaves on the plane trees are browning and falling off, and the weeds and ivy are growing a tad more slowly these days. Seeds are gaining prominence over flowers. And yet the woods and suburban roadsides still resemble very green jungle so thick that it seems hard to believe that autumn freezes will wither it into a dead brown.
In the evening we’re hearing the first choruses of katydids, especially loud at the end of hot days, and there’s the slight dimming of the afternoon light compared to a week or two ago. Soon will come the back-to-school ads. And friends in Vermont have been touting the fall foliage in the Taconic Range.
Children in Chicago surround an ice cream vendor in 1909.
Summer is the time of good goo: Ice-cream cones drip onto your chin; hot-dog mustard turns your face and hands an unsightly yellow; corn-on-the-cob butter slicks up the table; popsicles melt onto your sticky hands as you try to finish them before they turn completely into liquid. And that fading favorite of kids at summer county fairs and amusement parks -- cotton candy, instant diabetes!
Messy but happy experiences.
Frank Carini: Warming waters are changing fish mix
From ecoRI.org
For generations, winter flounder was one of the most important fish in Rhode Island waters. Longtime recreational fisherman Rich Hittinger recalled taking his kids fishing in the 1980s, dropping anchor, letting their lines sink to the bottom, waiting about half an hour and then filling their fishing cooler with the oval-shaped, right-eyed flatfish.
Now, four decades later, once-abundant winter flounder is difficult to find. The harvesting or possession of the fish is prohibited in much of Narragansett Bay and in Point Judith and Potter ponds. Anglers must return the ones they accidentally catch to the sea.
Overfishing is easily blamed, and the industry certainly bears responsibility, as does consumer demand. But winter flounder’s local extinction isn’t simply the result of overfishing. Sure, it played a factor, but the reasons are complicated, from habitat loss, pollution and energy production — i.e., the former Brayton Point Power Station, in Somerset, Mass., pre-cooling towers, when the since-shuttered facility took in about a billion gallons of water daily from Mount Hope Bay and discharged it at more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
The climate crisis, however, is likely playing the biggest role, at least at the moment, by shifting currents, creating less oxygenated waters and warming southern New England’s coastal waters. These impacts, which started decades ago, have and are transforming life in the Ocean State’s marine waters. The changes also impact ecosystem functioning and services. There’s no end in sight, as the type of fish and their abundance will continue to turn over as waters warm.
Rhode Island’s warming water temperatures are causing a biomass metamorphosis that is transforming the state’s commercial and recreational fishing industries, for both better and worse. The average water temperature in Narragansett Bay has increased by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, according to data kept by the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.
Locally, iconic species are disappearing (winter flounder, cod and lobsters), southerly species are appearing more frequently (spot and ocean sunfish) and more unwanted guests are arriving (jellyfish that have an appetite for fish larvae and, in the summer, lionfish, a venomous and fast-reproducing fish with a voracious appetite).
Dave Monti, a charter boat captain for the past two decades, has been fishing in Rhode Island and Massachusetts waters for 45 years. He’s seen a lot of change in a fairly limited amount of time.
He said the type of fish in Rhode Island’s marine waters today is much different than a decade ago. He pointed to the impact of a changing climate. Warm-water fish such as black sea bass, summer flounder and scup are here in abundance, according to Monti. These species are now an integral part of his charter business.
“It would have been unheard of 10 years ago to say black sea bass would be so abundant in our waters, and that it would be a big part of my charter business,” Monti said.
This transfer of fish along the Atlantic Coast is having an impact on commercial fisheries, most notably regarding the issue of assigning stock allocations.
For example, Monti noted that summer flounder moving north has created havoc with catch limits. He said Mid-Atlantic vessels, which possess the summer flounder quotas but now have fewer of the fish in their waters, have moved up the East Coast to fish. New England boats now have the fish in their waters but little allocation.
He said that the laws that govern commercial fishing need to keep up with the impacts of the climate crisis. He also noted that as warming waters change the type and abundance of fish in different regions, commercial fishermen have to retool their boats and gear and learn how to catch the species new to their waters.
Hittinger, first vice president of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, attributes the species changes he has witnessed in local waters, at least in part, to rising water temperatures.
When the Warwick resident started fishing regularly more than four decades ago, Hittinger said he caught cod and pollack off Block Island and winter flounder in all of the state’s bays. He noted that most of these fish are largely gone, replaced by warm-water species.
Speaking as a recreational angler, Hittinger said the changing of the species found in Rhode Island’s salt waters isn’t necessarily his concern. His concern lies with regulation that is slow to change with the times. He used black sea bass as an example, noting that Rhode Island’s recreational fishing restrictions on the species, implemented by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, were set 20 years ago. Now, he said, there are a lot more of them.
Black sea bass caught in Rhode Island waters must be at least 15 inches in length and the limit is three or seven per angler per day depending on the season. Hittinger noted that in New Jersey, where the fish is becoming slightly less plentiful, keepers must be at least 12.5-13 inches and the daily allowance is higher.
As the waters off the East Coast continue to warm, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the New England Fishery Management Council will likely be hearing similar concerns.
Stephen Hale, a long-time marine ecologist at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division Laboratory in Narragansett, said marine animals are shifting northward along the Atlantic Coast in response to the changing climate. He said the movement of a new species into an area can cause ecosystem disruption and that the depletion of key species from an area can lead to economic and social changes.
Hale noted that if your preferred habitat was warming to a level you found intolerable, you would basically have three choices: adapt (install an air conditioner, for example); move to a cooler locale (say Maine); or stay where you are and suffer the consequences (heat exhaustion, heat stroke, death).
He said many of the planet’s other species can only exercise the second option, while others are stuck with the third.
Along the East Coast numerous marine species, including bottom-dwelling invertebrates such as clams, snails, crustaceans and polychaete worms, have shifted their ranges poleward in response to rising water temperatures caused by the global climate crisis. Cold-water species such as cod, winter flounder and American lobster are moving to cooler locales.
Hale said species are trying to maintain their preferred thermal niche by moving poleward or into deeper water.
The Saunderstown resident, who retired from the EPA in 2018 after 23 years at the Narragansett lab, co-authored a 2017 study that covered two biogeographic provinces along the Atlantic Coast: Virginian, Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Cape Cod; and Carolinian, mid-Florida to Cape Hatteras.
The authors found that bottom water temperature increased 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit from 1990 to 2010. They also noted that the center of distribution of 22 out of 30 species studied shifted north in response to increasing water temperatures. Seven species shifted south, but moved just one-third the distance of the northward-movers.
“Fishermen are adaptive,” said Monti, a strong supporter of renewable energy development to address the climate crisis. “Every day is different with tides, currents, wind and bait. Warming waters and climate change are just additional factors. Regions are losing and gaining fish. It’s not going to end.
Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI.org.
At least someone loves him
‘Narcissus,’’ by Robert Henry, in his show “Solo Moments,’’ at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Aug. 21-Sept. 11.