It's been said it will take a Pearl Harbor-type event for America to get serious about addressing climate change. Well, the bombs are falling, but Congress hasn't declared war on carbon-dioxide.
I'm not talking about the uncontrolled gusher in the Gulf of Mexico that has many people re-evaluating our dependence on fossil fuels. I'm referring to extreme weather events happening throughout the nation involving record rainfall that causes devastating floods. These incidents come as no surprise to climate scientists, who say that warming global temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold and discharge greater amounts of water.
In the pre-dawn hours on Friday, approximately 300 campers in a remote Arkansas valley awoke when water began lapping at their tents. The Little Missouri River, normally 3 feet high, rose to 23 feet in a matter of hours, the result of torrential rainfall. At least 19 people were killed, two dozen were hospitalized, 60 were rescued and about 70 were reported missing. The New York Times reported that "state officials said they could not recall so destructive a flash flood in recent Arkansas history."
The tragedy at the campground is far from a freak event. It follows a pattern of similar never-seen-before downpours that have wreaked havoc from North Dakota to Rhode Island.
In case you missed the catastrophes that should be mobilizing our nation for an all-out assault on climate change, let me recap:
I asked leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen if the increasing frequency of severe weather events can be attributed to climate change.
"We know with certainty that the extremes of the hydrologic cycle increase as the planet becomes warmer," Hansen responded. "When we say 'you cannot blame an individual event on global warming,' that should not be taken as a lack of confidence in our understanding about the effect of warming on extremes. The increased water vapor in the air (and it increases rapidly with increased temperature) not only yields heavier rainfall events -- it also provides fuel for stronger storms driven by latent heat, including thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms -- so the strongest storms will be stronger. Again, don't blame a single storm on global warming, but look at the statistics -- 100-year floods will occur more often than one per century, 500-year storms will become more frequent, etc."
Hansen, author of the prophetic Storms of My Grandchildren, is unimpressed with the measures currently under discussion in Congress to curtail climate change. At an Earth Day rally in Washington, he unveiled his own proposal, "The People's Climate Stewardship Act." It would impose a steadily-increasing fee on carbon at the source -well, mine, port of entry - so that clean energy becomes competitive with fossil fuels within a decade. Revenue from those fees would be returned to all Americans to offset higher energy costs.
Political leaders must start to connect the dots between these catastrophic floods and our failure to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The longer we wait to address the problem, the more frequent these horrific disasters will become.
We have two choices: Move away from fossil fuels, or move to higher ground.
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The good news is we also have it within our power to move toward climate stability. Local, clean and renewable energy anyone? We are making it happen within our community here in Marin County. I suggest you check it out and ask your Representatives to support the Fee and Dividend Act of 2010. Together with Community Choice Aggregation Laws, we can be moving toward sustainability right NOW!!
A cold winter doesn't provide proof against the theory, unless the average temperature of the Earth over a sufficiently long period of time goes down. As it turns out, the average temperature has gone up--dramatically so!
What is so hard to understand here? Why is this so clear & simple to some of us but so mystifying to others, like our friend Ecocampaigner. Is this all just ExxonMobile and BP dollars talking?
Funnel clouds where spotted- good thing they did not touch down.
Here in New England we had record amounts (historical in some locales) if rainfall in March
we have had this year the warmest spring on record.
Flooding in Nashville recently- the weird flood in Arkansas over the weekend- and today record rains in Oklahoma.
The media chooses to ignore these events- they are afraid to offend the companies they work for- the advertising revenue of many companies has a decidedly right wing slant.
What kind of event needs to take place? A Tropical Cyclone hiting New York or New England?
A dust bowl in a few years in the Midwest? Or record floods continuing as the atmosphere warmed by the increasing CO2 produces so much water vapor that many parts of the nation has a populace facing destruction and loss of life.
Extreme weather means more terrifying hurricanes and tornadoes and fires than we usually see. But what can we expect such conditions to do to our daily life?
Rob Riess: ''While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, "If what you're saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?" He looked for a while and was quiet and didn't say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, "Well, there will be more traffic." I, of course, didn't think he heard the question right. Then he explained, "The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won't be there. The trees in the median strip will change." Then he said, "There will be more police cars." Why? "Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up."
And so far, over the last 10 years, we've had 10 of the hottest years on record.
http://dir.salon.com/books/int/2001/10/23/weather/index.html