Last week, at a place called Bird's Point, just below the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, the Army Corps of Engineers was busy mining a huge levee with explosives. The work was made dangerous by outbreaks of lightning, but eventually the charges were in place and corps Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh gave the order: A 2-mile-wide hole was blasted in the earthen levee, and a wall of water greater than the flow over Niagara Falls inundated 130,000 acres of prime Missouri farmland.
The corps breached the levee to ease pressure on other floodwalls; if it hadn't, the town of Cairo, Ill., might well have been inundated. But it's not as if the problem has been solved. That water will reenter the Mississippi a little farther downstream as it surges toward the sea. "We're just at the beginning of the beginning," Walsh said. Col. Vernie Reichling Jr. of the Memphis District of the corps said: "We'll have to fight this river all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. I don't see it letting up."
Of course, what the corps is really fighting is a river swelled not just by the power of nature but by the power of man. As climatologists have warned for years, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold. That means record snowfalls like the ones we saw this winter across the upper Midwest, and record rainfalls like the ones that have washed across much of the region this spring. And it also means more evaporation -- and record drought -- in places like parched Texas.
In Pakistan, Australia and now the center of the North American continent, we're getting a powerful taste of what global warming feels like in its early stages. (And if for some reason you've decided not to believe scientists, then ask the people we pay to analyze risk in our society: In September, one of the largest reinsurance companies in the world, Munich Re, said that "the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.")
There are no grounds for optimism in this fight against the weather. So far we've only increased the temperature of the planet about a degree, and that's been enough to set the Arctic to melting, turn the ocean 30% more acidic and make the atmosphere about 4% wetter, loading the dice for floods. Climatologists predict that unless we kick oil, gas and coal habits very, very fast, the increase in temperature will be 4 or 5 degrees before the century is out. If one degree does the damage we're seeing at the moment, we'd be fools to find out what 4 degrees will look like.
But foolishness is carrying the day at the moment. Consider the fecklessness Washington has shown on climate. Just last month, the House voted by a 56-vote margin to deny that climate change was real. It's like an entire chamber full of Neville Chamberlains, hopeful that they can wish trouble away.
There's no one we can shoot to make global warming disappear. But we could, if we wanted to, devote the scale of resources we've spent in the last decade invading Iraq and Afghanistan to the task of retooling our energy infrastructure. That's the kind of commitment it would take, an effort we usually seem to muster only in the face of military threat. But the danger that comes from climate change is every bit as real, and in the long run far greater, than anything Al Qaeda could throw at us. We're really fighting for our civilization, as people in the lower Mississippi will spend the next few weeks finding out.
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
Indeed, Bill.
Since weather is a product of the climate system, and since Earth's climate system has already changed and continues to change due to elevated greenhouse gas forcing, there is now a climate change component in *every* severe weather event.
"Worst Drought in 50 Years Threatens Cuba's Already Meager Food Production"
Humanity is going through a period of change which hasn't been experienced since Galileo. Humanity's entire worldview is being forced to accept facts that not only deny existing notions, but have the twofold effect of denying notions that lazy people are dearly attached to (such as their SUV). So, climate deniers, while wrong about the facts, should not be held in disdain. But rather, pity. They are simple creatures. Trying their best to live simply in a complex world.
You did that?
Yes, 98% of climatologist say the earth is warming and humans are causing it, in line with the findings of the IPCC. The National Academy of Science:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
Are there other areas of science where you think you know more than all of the experts?
MY: "it is getting cooler not hotter...">>
Let's ask NASA:
"All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. 5 Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. 6 Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase."
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
MY: "The variations in sun activity">>
The sun is in a cooling cycle. See above. Try again.
MY: "What was once global warming is now climate change">>
The "CC" in IPCC stands for "climate change." They formed in 1988. Get informed, then post.
1. The IPCC is a political organisation masquerating as a scientific one....by concentrating only on the studies that confirm it's foregone selected conclusions, it kind of keeps things "in line". The chairman is Dr. Pachauri, a railroad engineer (appropriately), who is well placed to benefit from the Carbon Cults geo-political and financial goals and results. 98 percent of Climatologists say ? 52 scientists signed on IPCC Summary in 2007, in 2008 a US Senate minority report, 650 scientists refuted the alleged "conscensis" that global warming is caused by humans... In his December 2006 book, Hell and High Water: Global Warming, and in an interview on Fox News on 31 January 2007, energy expert Joseph Romm noted that the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is already out of date and omits recent observations and factors contributing to global warming. What do I (we) know ?
A report published by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change challenges NASA scientist James Hansen's claims of a dire global warming future. Physicist Sherwood Idso and agronomist Craig Idso conducted a comprehensive evaluation of Hansen's April 2007 testimony before the House Select Committee and concluded there is "very little evidence to justify [Hansen's] policy prescriptions for dealing with what he calls a 'dangerous climate change.'"
Considered by many to be the world's foremost authority on the 'greenhouse effect' of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, His statements are typically regarded as expressions of fact. "In many cases, however, they are merely his opinions. When Hansen's testimony is compared with **the scientific investigations***** of a diverse assemblage of highly competent researchers in a wide variety of academic disciplines, we find that he paints a very different picture of the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in shaping the future fortunes of man and nature alike than what is suggested by that larger body of work." aka DON'T DISTRACT ME WITH THE FACTS, PLEASE. Contrary to what Hansen claims is the fact that the earth is not any warmer now - and is possibly a fair amount cooler - than it was many times in the past. These warmer-than-present periods include much of the Medieval Warm Period of a thousand years ago, " These facts are extremely important because they demonstrate that today's temperatures are not in any way unusual, unnatural or unprecedented, contrary to what Hansen claims.
Oh I bet we're seeing this long before the 'end of the century'. So glad I'm past the half way mark of my life. Good luck, little ones...
Eureka! I found it! Right there on Harvard's web site:
"the spatial and temporal variability inherent in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) makes it difficult to differentiate between global climate trends and regional variability"
Well, maybe that's not it. Kesac would know. (Just doesn't want to tell us.)
Picture what flood control actually does. It takes a large volume of water and rather than letting it disperse all along the river channel flood plains, it controls the swell and channels it down the river. The swell continues to grow in depth as it moves south with the idea that we can control it and keep it out of populated areas until it spills into the gulf. If we didn't have current flood controls the swell would be dissipating into flood plains as it moves south and would be no where near as deep as it is. This is what the spillways and selective levee breaks accomplish, releases water from the swell into farmland and not population centers.
Since the 1927 flood had no controls, it was being dissipated as it moved south and was STILL the record setting flood depth. That volume of water must have been exponentially greater than any others, including this year. Man has some responsibility for this flooding but it has nothing to do with man made greenhouse gases
The last species to intentionally flirt with its own extinction was ...
... I'll get back to you on that.
Ptooey! Tastes bitter!
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
Jan 13, 2011 ... The twelve patents below are the backbone of the HAARP project, ..... Scientists have experimented with weather control since the 1940's, ...
www.haarp.net/ - Cached
HAARP chemtrails weather modification electromagnetic weapons war ...
Reference to Barium in the HAARP patent report: ... HAARP and Space Based Weather Control: The "Thunderstorm Solar Power Satellite" ...
www.bariumblues.com/haarp1.htm
Severe weather turns deadly again.
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/49473/severe-weather-on-tuesday-turn.asp?partner=accuweather