climate change Archives - Page 5 of 5

Not a snowball’s chance in hell climate change will be addressed in the USA in a timely fashion

This past winter was the warmest on record

Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that it will require states seeking billions of dollars in U.S. preparedness funds to sign off on plans to mitigate the effects of climate change.

“The policy doesn’t affect federal money for relief after a hurricane, flood, or other disaster. Specifically, beginning in March 2016, states seeking preparedness money will have to assess how climate change threatens their communities. Governors will have to sign off on hazard mitigation plans.”

One of the governors who this will affect is Rick Scott of Florida, who not only denies there is man-made climate change but has barred officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” “in any official communications, emails, or reports since shortly after he came into office in 2011.” At least one employee was ordered to get a medical evaluation for considering “climate change.”

Even though President Obama noted this month that climate change is hurting our health, I don’t see that anything substantial will happen on this front in the United States any time soon. The moment which crystallized that belief for me happened in February 2015, when Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, used a snowball as a prop on the Senate floor… “to show the recent spate of cold weather in the Northeast is a sign that human activity isn’t causing climate change.”

Yes, it snowed in Washington, DC, in February, and it was cold, too. However, the fact, is that this past winter was the warmest on record, and 2015 had the second warmest February on record, despite what happened in the eastern US.

Moreover, a majority of Americans don’t think climate change will affect them personally, even though it already is.

It may already be too late for Vanuatu, the Pacific island nation, which was devastated by the deadly typhoon Pam last month. Moreover, big shelves of Antarctic ice are melting faster than scientists thought.

Happy Earth Day.

Z is for Zone

Those of us in the northeast US felt pretty secure about avoiding the remnants of hurricanes until Irene and Lee in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 roared through.

I came across this article: Alaskan villages try “climigration” in the face of climate change. The subhead is “When a town turns to a perpetual disaster area, it might be time to move it.”

I was thinking about this in following the Oklahoma tornadoes in May; the picture is from the aftermath. How DOES one live in a tornado alley? There was an intense storm in Moore, Oklahoma in 1999, after all. There have been a few articles about why there are few underground shelters in the area; Dustbury linked to one.

This led me to muse on other disasters; repeated flooding on parts of the Mississippi River, e.g. A couple of towns, I’ve read, moved to a safety zone several miles away from the river, but others get sandbags together for a near-annual threat of the town being swallowed up.

I recall after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there was lots of chatter about someone who could be so crazy to build a city, New Orleans, that actually below sea level. It’s a major port, that’s why, and the government is building walls that – likely – will protect it from another storm.

Wildfires and earthquakes and the occasional avalanche in the western US, hurricanes in the southeast. What is the zone one can go to that is immune to the ravages of Mother Nature? Those of us in the northeast US felt pretty secure about avoiding the remnants of hurricanes until Irene and Lee in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 roared through. Sandy made a left turn; it’s not supposed to do that! The American meteorological models didn’t even predict that path, though the European models did.

So where in your country, or part of the country, are the danger zones, the safety zones? Of course, one cannot be 100% safe anywhere, but there are greater and lesser risks.

I’m still convinced that my locale in upstate New York is still a relatively safe zone to live in. That IS subject to change…

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

W is for Weird Weather

There are simpler things to do, though, such as planting a tree and taking less energy dependent transportation.

People in the US state of Oklahoma have had a tough year. The state’s “July average temperature was a scorching 88.9 degrees, the warmest to occur in any state during any month on record. State record hailstone measuring nearly 6” from Gotebo on May 23… At the other extreme, Oklahoma recorded its coldest temperature on record on February 10 when Nowata dipped to a frigid -31 degrees. On that same the day, the state’s heaviest 24-hour snowfall on record piled up, with 27 inches measured in Spavinaw. Not to mention non-weather related events, such as the 5.6 magnitude earthquake, the strongest on record.

The Sooner State is hardly the only one. Back in the spring, there were already more weather-related fatalities in the US than in all of 2010. By the halfway point, NOAA had made it official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History. “Near the halfway point, 2011 has already seen eight weather-related disasters in the U.S. that caused more than $1 billion in damages.”

Then August 2011 set records in several locations for “torrid heat, torrential rain, and river flooding. You can thank, in part, an exceptional Plains drought and Hurricane Irene,” another billion-dollar event.

Of course, the question is why. A recent study linked air pollution to extreme weather. California is a leader in places where sometimes the air isn’t fit to breathe.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to “adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change.” See the report here. And the deniers are in full force.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. We CAN minimize the damage by making changes. Valmeyer, Illinois “was once a community of about 900 on the banks of the Mississippi River, 25 miles south of St. Louis. The Great Flood of 1993 left 90 percent of Valmeyer’s buildings damaged beyond repair…Valmeyer would be rebuilt on a 500-acre parcel on a nearby bluff overlooking the river…with energy-efficient home construction…resource-efficient institutions and…future renewable energy development. When the Mississippi flooded again, the town was safe, though it would not have been had they rebuilt in the same location.

There are simpler things to do, though, such as planting a tree and taking less energy-dependent transportation. Meanwhile, check out NOAA’s State of the Climate, a Global Analysis. Interesting stuff.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9