tonight on kqed newsroom, one of california's leading weather scientists warns of a possible megaflood as a result of continue it climate change and daniel swain joins us to discuss that in the report and bay area-based author dave edgar's talks about one of his books being banned in a school district in south dakota. will talk to him and his other leaders of his nonprofit which is celebrating 20 years of teaching you how to write everything from science fiction to essays to poems.

it's a better fund version the school. >> the vibrant colors and images of women working, leading, and creating in the women's building merrill and this is something beautiful this week. coming to you from kqed headquarters in san francisco on this friday, august 19, 2022. hello and welcome. i am priya david clemens and this is kqed newsroom. we have talked about drought and wildfire and this week another threat took center stage, the megaflood and a new study indicates that california could be in for torrential storms that last for weeks overwhelmingrivers and causing havoc in urban areas and one of the study's authors daniel swain joins us now from boulder, colorado. thank you for joining us on the show. >> thank you for having me. tell us about the findings in your study.

>> we do know that california is actually a region that is subject to episodic severe flood events and throughout its geologic history. there was something that happened about five times per millennia or so so maybe every 200 years and the last really big one was in 1862 and produced what came to be known as the great flood of 1862. we do expect that climate change is significantly upping the odds and in this study we did find that climate change has essentially doubled the likelihood at least of relative to about a century ago and that the warming we are likely to see over the coming decades will further increase that risk and to be clear as to what we are talking about, it is a weeks long sequence of severe an atmospheric river storms that bring perhaps 100 inches of rainfall in the mountains or

local even more, so this is a very large amount of precipitation in a pretty short period of time were talking about. >> what does that look like? can you paint a picture for us in urban areas and wilderness areas? what happens with all of this additional rainfall? >> in this first phase of the broader project look mainly at the meteorological side of things so how much rain and snow and how intensive the storms and the second phase is going to focus on how much inundation there is and who gets flooded and we are working with the california department of water to get a flood map for the entire state of california so we will have more detailed answers at that point but i think even now we can sort of sense for the big problems will be. we know and 1862 with the great flood that the central valley turned into a temporary inland sea nearly 300 miles long in bayshore parts of the san francisco bay area and as well

as much of the heavily populated los angeles and orange counties. these are now places were millions of people have homes and businesses as well as calling for many of california's major transportation arteries. so this is been a hugely disruptive ent and we have 40 million people today living in places where there were about 400,000 people living in 62 so it is a much larger population in harm's way and we have modern flood control infrastructure that would mitigate the risk so it is this tension between far more people being in harm's way today then there were the last time and tempered somewhat by the fact that we do have modern flight control systems in place but the questionis to what extent and what it be able to stand up to a storm sequence of this magnitude and i think that is

still little bit of an open question and working with vaous partners to answer at the moment so suffice it to say, it would be a very disruptive event and a very costly event and probably change the face of california forever. >> when does your study predicts that this sort of flooding could start to occur? >> it is already possible and we know it is possible because it did happen in 1862 before there was climate change. so we do know it is already possible and it could happen in any given year but it is more likely now with warming than once was and it will be more likely still in the future with another degree or so that we are likely to experience and we do estimate that right now the risk in any given year is perhaps one in 50, which is up from one and 100 a century ago what that means is that the cumulative risk over the next 30 or 40 years could be as high

as 50% to 60% so perhaps more likely than not we will see a flood event of some magnitude over the next 30 to 40 years and it is more likely than not that most of us will experience one of these events in our lifetime. >> i would like to ask you about some legislation that congress pass, the most significant climate change investment ever and they also passed ad infrastructure bill last year. how much will that money and that investment head off this danger? >> i think it is a bit of an open question. obviously the less warming there is the less increase there will be for incidents like this but even with this relatively new and fairly optimistic current emission reduction proposal and policies including this recent legislative actions that have taken place, global warning is

a fundamental problem is not just a estion about the united states what california does but a question about the whole world and even now we are still on a path to roughly double the amount of warming that we have already seen if not more even with these recent legislative decisions and climate accords so there is still a lot of warming that will occur and on the current path even though there is somewhat less warming that appeared a decade ago. there will be further risks increases. and the other side of the question is how much will these sort of questions or infrastructure bills allow us to partially adapt to those risks so upgrades and flood control and restore natural floodplains and bypasses do things that may help reduce the risk of people when these events occur so i think that is a more interesting question in the short term because there is significant potential that this sort of infrastructure funding bills if we end up allocating

the funding in that direction could help mitigate some of these risks. i think that also is an open question but one that may have short-term relevance. >> will this additional rain help to mitigate the problems we have with drought and wildfire? >> the interesting thing is that it actually may not end up being additional rain and what we find is in a warming climate, california's precipitation neither increases or decreases a lot an average we do see more intensive operation because of warming temperatures and that is the main reason we see worst droughts and wildfires but on the other hand we see shorter and sharper things so this is in line with the idea that the risk of drowning and flood is likely going to increase at the same time in california. so it may help mitigate short- term droughts if there is one

occurring, but in the long run it doesn't really reduce the risk of drought and in fact there is still a long term trend and even in the air of increasing risk of the severe flood event and i think we have to learn to comanage these risks simultaneously and there are ways to help reduce the risk of the consequences of the drought to help us recharge flood water aquifers so diverting some of these episodic flood flows but instead recharge are depleted aquifers and that is one such example we could allocate certain sort of infrastructure spending to accomplish those goals but in a warming climate we expect there to be increasing we call it precipitation whiplash those increasingly wide swings between extreme conditions on

one hand but extremely dry conditions on the other hand we have discussed that previously so we will continue to see both. >> daniel, thank you for joining us. >> thanks again for having me. let's turn out to education. the american library association said librarians in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books in schools and public libraries and one of those books is the circle welcome by day ever -- dave eggers. >> thank you. you are a hero because you always make your patients smile and laugh around you. thank you brave juli. you always make sure patients have the support they need to be resilient and i smell the flowery bloom of roses next to you. >> the nonprofit is celebrating

its 20 year anniversary and he joins us now along with the cofounder and veteran public school teacher and the current executive director who is also been teaching for many years. thank you for all being here. >> you have brought a wealth of books. tell me what is here. >> these are from the beginning and we thought we had to honor student work and students were writing short stories or poems or writing their own narratives and we wanted to make them codified or worthy of being in a library or sold in stores or give them professional treatment to honor the worker amplify it. >> these are all books written by students and published -- >> published by us. >> at the beginning everybody

was piled into the own space so professional authors and youthful working side-by-side and the authors were getting the work published so we were able publish youth work and one of our dreams was a young person would walk into city arts and lecture and show their friend their name in the table of contents but at least be honored. what happens also when we celebrate the books after is they walk around for about at least a few weeks about 10 feet tall like becoming a published author. is a big deal and i said feel so proud every time a book came out which is frequently. and it is such a beautiful beautiful symbol of this great accomplishment. and the youth don't just write something and we publish it but they work really hard and want

what the teachers tell us is that for books if we can get 8 to 12 drafts. it really gets into the craft and hard work that real authors do. >> tell us about how this organization is working right now in san francisco. you have broadened out from that one first storefront with the pirate shop in the front writing in the back to other centers as well and you work with local schools? >> right. we are in the mission district. we started 20 years ago and several schools. now we have expanded our programming and we have three centers and there is one in the tenderloin and one in mission bay and about a dozen schools that we serve. basically, what the secret sauce is is what happens to a young person and where do they go from i hate writing to i am a published author in the we have a partnership model where we are very responsive to every community we serve so we don't

have a cookie-cutter approach. it really depends on the child and community and school. and then we also have the spirit of joy and whimsy that is unique in that we ve a supply store for pirates. if you have a peg leg you need, you can come to our store and go shopping but that spirit of joy permeates all of our work togetherith the young people and inspires creativity that comes through. >> we do have a little clip from a student talking about a creative writing story that he is working on, a comic book. why don't we go ahead and roll that and we will come back and keep talking about it. >> in the future i made it a virtl reality and they can go on an adventure and they kill the villain in the virtual- reality, king savage and the twist is that actually the friend is the evil one and king savage was actually trying to help them. >> dave, when you started this

20 years ago, what was the need you saw then? why was literacy such a gaping need which seems to continue? >> my mom was a teacher and a lot of my best friends were teachers and became teacher here in the bay area and they kept saying that for the sudents falling behind d those who were reluctant readers and writers they needed more attention and if they had 120 students today they didn't have that two hours per student to give so they said if they could only clone themselves or have more caring adults to shine a light on students work and work with them one-on-one than they could make passionate writers out of them. and we happen to know a lot of writers and copy editors and authors and journalists that have some extra time so we sort of combine the need and this

waiting army of available tutors. it is still that way today. it is human sitting next to each other shoulder to shoulder working on and writing on the page. that will never go away i don't think. the passion the kids had to be heard for two hours at a time from this one community member who just wants them to succeed, it won't ever change. 20 years is exactly the same formula that it was way back when and we have expanded in many ways, but the basic one-on- one formula is exactly the same. >> actually had 146 students, and it was impossible to give them the attention i thought they deserved. i did not know there was this creative class and i was teaching them super serious and hunkered down and trying to meet everybody's needs in the

school setting and what dave knew that i didn't is that there is this creative class who was willing to pitch in and help. i think one of the things that makes me the proudest is from the very beginning we wanted to work and make sure dreams are coming true and we asked them about what projects they always wanted to do but didn't have the resources or bandwidth to do. we were able to say that that project, if we paid for the books or the publishing and we brought in the tutors and we did it, how would that sound? and the teachers of the excited. you asked earlier about the growth. as we grew, which was rapid, one of the things we knew as we couldn't get every single center at one point around the country but we ask teachers, would you work with us again and would you recommend us to another teacher and one of the things that made me feel incredibly proud is that all around the country they would finish up the project and we said would you work with us again and would you recommend us and the answer was yes so as the growth happened we were

really sure that we were doing this and making sure that teachers live were better and easier and more fulfilled. >> you also have more than 70 other centers around the country that have modeled themselves around the world and off of you and tell us about the state of literacy and the concerns that we all should be aware of? >> i think it is very dire right now and about 40% of third graders are at grade level in english at 40% and then meanwhile there is research about the fact that third grade reading proficiency predicts whether or not you graduate from high school and we do know that correlates to financial stability. so it is really dire, but beyond that, nobody when they talk about literacy tas about ratings. i want to say that writing is

essential to access and every single discipline taught but it is way more than that d it is how we market and sell goods and how we tell the truth in media and it is how we write our laws and how we build community, empathy, et cetera. so writing is an essential skill that is not taught. >> i want to turn to talk about some writing being banned and not available to everybody. one of your books, the circle, was banned in south dakota. i have been reading through it and from what i can see there are some short sex scenes that seems those may have triggered the ban and i don't see anything else. is that what was? >> yes. i think mine was the least important of the books that were banned and usually the challenges have gone exponentially up and most of them are they are banning books that teach alternative narratives and alternative stories that usually aren't

hold like lgbtq+ stories or crt stories and they are trying to squelch in silence these narratives. >> crt is critical race theory. >> yes. they will try to find a passage or two that is semi-offensive in some way and then they will throw the rest of the book away. these challenges and these bannings i think there are far more and it is a movement to silence these stories. i think it is a battle that has just begun at this new stage because i think they are becoming very clever at finding ways to take these books from the shelves and i do think we have to battle it foot by foot or yard by yard and i think it will be a thing in this next decade that we have to be vigilant. >> i will put some meat on the bones of those numbers you are

mentioning and to be specific, the american library association said nearly 1600 books were challenged in 2021, double those from the year before and the highest number they have seen since they began tracking 20 years ago. how did you respond to your book being banned? >> i got in touch with the other authors, there were five of us, that were pulled from the shelves in this rapid city school district. the first thing we did is we got in touch with the local independent bookstore and made an arrangement where any students who were affected or seniors in high school that had been assigned these books but then they were pulled from the shelves, could go into this bookstore and get them for free. so we sold over 400 books. so all of the seniors who were affected got free copies of all five books and they were much more intrigued and more interested. so there is always this unintended effect. so, you know, that community is

an amazing place and rapid city is a great town and the teachers. úbut it goes back to teachers. again, these teachers were challenged and all of their choices during covid and they are chalenged in their choices of reading material and now this transparency law coming in and the school districts are saying everything that the teacher teaches has to be preapproved, so again and again we are making it difficult to be a teacher and to stay in that profession. so the rest of us who support teachers have to do everything we can to give them the freedom and give them the autonomy they deserve. >> i am curious with banning books, do you think there is content that shouldn't be in high school libraries or public libraries? >> not in libraries.

everything must be in the library. if the bible is in the library, perks of being a wallflower should be in the library and the supreme court has ruled on this again and again and you can pull a book from the library because it is offensive to some people. there are many different case law about that but in terms of assigning the books, there are some books that shouldn't be assigned to a 13-year-old and they are not ready for that content. but and rapid city, these kids were 18 and seniors in high school and about to go into the world. they are ready to have a few pages of sexual content and context. every book including the bible has plenty of sexual content text. >> your book is already a bestseller and i know the sex thing because i have read it, i think this will make this book incredibly popular. but for me, it is just so sad because wedo the opposite at 826. i remember vividly asking young people do you have a young important story to tell and before we worked with them, many of them said they didn't have an important story to tell.

after writing themselves and celebrating that story and spending time just listening to them, they will understand like i do have an important story to tell like who i am and where i come from and how i see the world is something of value to the community. it is so frustrating. >> one of the students we talked with there spoke about the joy she has in just being there and being with other students. >> i really enjoyed everybody here and everybody is so nice and we all had a fun time with each other. >> tell me about that. the experience the students have and that empowerment. >> sometimes they start out saying i am not a writer and they turn into i am a published author and they are 10 feet tall. i think it is really the joy we bring, that individualized attention and this spirit of my story is important and i can do it and that is what we do.

>> and even the strangest ideas they may have. and isaac had a very unusual story that he wrote. and when we say, when they write a story about a leg it space aliens what they want to start a belly company, and we say that start good and let's publish itand there is this shock like, really? >> we will have to look at those books and everybody will read those stories. dave and all of you think you. a home for emerging women led projects since 1979, the san francisco women's building is covered in a vibrant mural celebrating the accomplishments of female role models and completed in 1994, it depicts the likes of george o'keefe and others alongside aztec and chinese goddesses. is one of the first women owned

and operated community centers in the country, more than 170 organizations trace their roots here. it is this week's something beautifl. >> ♪

>> such warm and welcoming images. that is the end of our show tonight. you can find our news from online or on twitter or email us and you can reach me on social media. thank you for joining us. we will see you right back here next friday night. have a great weekend.

geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. tonight on “pbs news weekend,” florida politics -- we look at the races toatch ahead of tuesday's primary as the state's republican governor tests s influence on the national stage. then, a parents' plea -- the fight to have lieutenant richard collins iii buried at arlington national cemetery, after his murder by a white supremacist. dawn: we feel that our son was murdered in an act of terrorism, and so therefore, he should be placed at rest in arlington cemetery. geoff: and back to school anxiety -- a mother and daughter's advice for overcoming fears of returning to the classroom after covid-forced remote learning. all that and the day's headlines on tonight's "pbs news weekend."