Posts Tagged ‘flood’
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken”*…
The estimable Jonathan Watts on the (painfully) pivotal year just ended…
As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment when failures became apparent.
“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed,” he said.
“Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.”…
The bright side of this clear dichotomy is that young people may realise that they must take charge of their future. The turbulent status of today’s politics may provide opportunity,” he said.
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His comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows that the world is already heating to dangerous levels…
Veteran climate watchers have been horrified at the pace of change. “The climate year 2023 is nothing but shocking, in terms of the strength of climate occurrences, from heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires, to rate of ice melt and temperature anomalies particularly in the ocean,” Prof Johan Rockström, the joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said.
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Aquino [Francisco Eliseu Aquino, a professor of climatology and oceanography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and the deputy director of Brazil’s polar and climatic centre] said human influence – through the burning of fossil fuels – had also created “frightening” dynamics between the poles and the tropics. Cold wet fronts from the Antarctic had interacted with record heat and drought in the Amazon to create unprecedented storms in between. Floods in southern Brazil killed 51 people in early September and then returned with similarly devastating force in mid-November.
Aquino said this “record record” was a taste of what was to come as the world entered dangerous levels of warming. “From this year onwards, we will understand concretely what it means to flirt with 1.5C [of heating] in the global average temperature and new records for disasters,” he said.
This is already happening. This year’s deadliest climate disaster was the flood in Libya that killed more than 11,300 people in the coastal city of Derna. In a single day, Storm Daniel unleashed 200 times as much rain as usually falls on the city in the entire month of September. Human-induced climate change made this up to 50 times more likely.
Forest fires burned a record area in Canada and Europe, and killed about 100 people in Lahaina on Maui island, the deadliest wildfire in recent US history, which happened in August. For those who prefer to calculate catastrophe in economic terms, the US broke its annual record of billion-dollar disasters by August, by which time there had already been 23.
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…as science has proved beyond any doubt, global temperatures would continue to rise as long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuels and forests.
In the years ahead, the heat “anomaly” and catastrophes of 2023 would first become the new norm, and then be looked back on as one of the cooler, more stable years in people’s lives. As Hansen warned, unless there is radical and rapid change, failure will be built into the climate system…
Bracing, but critically important– eminently worth reading in full: “World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say,” from @jonathanwatts in @guardian.
* Leo Tolstoy
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As we face facts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1870 that Congress authorized the formation of the U.S. weather service (later named the Weather Bureau; later still, the National Weather Service), and placed it under the direction of the Army Signal Corps. Cleveland Abbe, who had started the first private weather reporting and warning service (in Cincinnati) and had been issuing weather reports or bulletins since 1869, was the only person in the country at the time who was experienced in drawing weather maps from telegraphic reports and forecasting from them. He became the weather service’s inaugural chief scientist– effectively its founding head– in January, 1871. The first U.S. meteorologist, he is known as the “father of the U.S. Weather Bureau,” where he systemized observation, trained personnel, and established scientific methods. He went on to become one of the 33 founders of the National Geographic Society.
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water”*…
Katherine LaGrave with the story of America’s first water sommelier believes that the more we think about what we drink, the more we will care about the planet. But first, he has to get people to take him seriously…
… Martin Riese, is America’s first water sommelier, curating menus and tastings around what he calls “the most important beverage on the planet.”…
Riese is taking cues from the element he considers most beloved, going with the flow and flowing where he’s able, taking opportunities as they come, and sharing why we should care about water with anyone who cares to listen.
“Water is not just water,” he says to me one sunny October afternoon, shining bright from Los Angeles via laptop with the urgency of a theater attendant walking you to your seat just before the lights dim and the show starts. OK, I think. Off we go. Down into waterworld…
A trip worth taking- Riese’s story and his provocative thoughts on that most crucial substance: “Waterworld,” from @kjlagrave in @AFARmedia.
* W. H. Auden
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As we get wet, we might recall that on this date in 1993, after weeks of flooding elsewhere in the state (dramatically, in Ames), efforts to protect Valley Junction in West Des Moines from flooding failed, forcing 5,000 people from their homes. The Court Avenue district in downtown Des Moines was awash. By the next day, more than 250,000 people were without water after flooding shut down the Des Moines Water Works. In addition, An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people were without electricity. Then-Sec Taylor Stadium, now the Iowa Cubs’ Principal Park, was underwater. The entire state was declared a disaster area.
“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity”*…
Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, wildfires– they’re all on the rise, in both number and severity. Which is putting more strain on FEMA… But as Nicole Wetsman explains, FEMA is so hard to deal with that a new industry, “disaster consultants,” has emerged… and looks likely to prosper…
… FEMA is, in theory, complicated for a reason. Its labyrinth of rules is there to curb fraud and to make sure that local governments are using taxpayer money appropriately. But a laser focus on fraud prevention sometimes leads to the agency spending as much or more on documentation and reviews as the project itself should cost. “FEMA will spend thousands of dollars writing a project worksheet for $250 of eligible costs,” says Ben Rose, recovery and mitigation section chief at Vermont Emergency Management. “It’s not seeing the forest for the trees.”
And it also makes the process nearly impossible to navigate alone, particularly for cities and small towns that have never dealt with disasters before. Most don’t have any in-house emergency management experts who understand even the basics of the process. Some states, like Vermont, usually send in their own teams from emergency management departments to help cities and towns with the FEMA process. They only use consultants as force multipliers during really, really big disasters. Others, like Oregon, rely on them more often because the state just can’t maintain the level of staffing required.
That layers on additional costs for communities and, by extension, FEMA — which is well aware of the role consultants play in the public assistance program. It even pays for them: the towns, counties, or other groups applying for public assistance funding can use up to 5 percent of any grants for management costs. Still, FEMA used to be a bit dismissive toward consultants, [disaster consultantr AThat layers on additional costs for communities and, by extension, FEMA — which is well aware of the role consultants play in the public assistance program. It even pays for them: the towns, counties, or other groups applying for public assistance funding can use up to 5 percent of any grants for management costs. Still, FEMA used to be a bit dismissive toward consultants, [disaster consultant Alyssa ] Carrier says. That’s changed over the past few years. “It’s much more like, let’s work together,” she says.
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If anything, the public assistance process has only gotten more byzantine over the past few years, experts say. The agency set up a digital portal to streamline the process of submitting public assistance grants. But it’s an undertaking to train local officials — who might have six other jobs — in that tool. “You have to upload every document and do them in a certain order,” Carrier says. “It can be hard to follow if you don’t understand the process to begin with. And one of the issues is, if you don’t do everything in order, you’ll get kicked back out and have to start all over again.”
FEMA is assessing the public assistance program with a focus on simplification, Jeremy Edwards, FEMA press secretary, said in an email to The Verge. “FEMA continues its ongoing efforts and initiatives to simplify and streamline the public assistance program,” he said.
But experts say FEMA also seems to be getting stricter with how it applies its own rules around what’s eligible for public assistance funding and around the rules cities and local governments have to follow to get that funding. Some of that is likely because of pressure from the various oversight agencies, like OIG, that come in and double-check the agency’s work. In 2016, the OIG released a report saying that FEMA wasn’t doing enough to make sure that groups receiving public assistance grants were sticking to procurement guidelines. They followed up with a similar report in 2021. “After another report like this, Public Assistance Recipients and Subrecipients should expect FEMA to take an even firmer stance on requiring compliance with procurement regulations,” wrote Michelle Zaltsberg, an attorney specializing in disaster recovery, in a blog post.
All of that oversight colors FEMA’s decisions. “Too often, FEMA prioritizes or looks through the lens of avoiding audit findings, avoiding Inspector General reports, and avoiding waste, fraud, and abuse complaints,” Phelps says. “And then like third or fourth on the list of what they try to do is help survivors.”
None of this is relieved by the growing frequency of disasters pulling the agency — and its money — in all directions. The amount distributed through public assistance funding has gone up for the past three years. There are no restrictions to the program based on dollar amounts; how much money gets spent is purely based on what’s eligible for the program. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the changing climate meant things like wildfires and hurricanes were appearing more frequently and in places where they may not have hit before. Before around 2015, Oregon used to average a federal disaster every 17 or 18 months, Phelps says. Since 2015, they’ve averaged a disaster declaration every seven or eight months — more than twice as often.
That leads to FEMA almost acting more as an insurance company that only pays out money when it has to than an agency providing aid, Phelps says. The first priority often seems to be making sure the paperwork is perfect…
A sobering read: “The Disaster Consultants,” from @NicoleWetsman in @verge.
* John D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon considered the richest person in American history (and possibly in modern history)
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As we ruminate on response, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that Hurricane Iniki struck the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i; with winds of over 145 mph, it was the second-strongest Pacific hurricane on record, and caused around $3.1 billion (in 1992 USD) in damage and six deaths, making it the costliest natural disaster on record in the state. At the time, Iniki was the third-costliest United States hurricane. The storm struck just 18 days after Hurricane Andrew, the costliest tropical cyclone ever at the time, struck Florida.
Kauaʻi citizens were hopeful for disaster relief from the government or insurance companies, though after six months they felt annoyed with the lack of help.
“Managed retreat is not just a last resort. It is not a failure to adapt at all. It is actually an active decision to adapt.”*…
The town of Valmeyer, Illinois relocated decades ago after devastating floods. It may have lessons for communities forced to consider a managed retreat from climate impacts today…
In the summer of 1993, the southwestern Illinois town of Valmeyer took the brunt of a massive flood when, not once but twice in a month, the swollen Mississippi River topped its levee system. The village was engulfed in up to 16ft (5m) of floodwater that lingered for months, damaging some 90% of buildings.
Faced with either rebuilding the town and risking yet another disaster, or simply scattering to other towns or states by themselves, the 900 residents of this tight-knit farming community made a bold choice: to pack up everything and start over on new ground.
In the years that followed, hundreds of people moved out of the floodplain as the entire town was rebuilt from scratch on a bluff a mile uphill. In doing so, the town has become an early example of one of the most radical ways a community can adapt to a warming world: moving people and assets out of harm’s way.
Known as managed retreat, or planned relocation, the approach is often framed as a last resort to be pursued only when no other alternatives exist. But as the effects of climate change intensify, exposing more and more people across the globe to the risk of catastrophic flooding, devastating fires and other calamitous natural hazards, the concept is increasingly making its way into the mainstream as a viable – and necessary – adaptation strategy…
When one can’t resist the effects of climate change (e.g., with a sea wall to hold back rising water levels), or accommodate it (e.g., using air cooling and “greening” to combat rising temperatures), the remaining option is retreat: “The Illinois town that got up and left,” from @BBC_Future.
See also: “Managed Retreat in the United States.”
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As we rethink relocation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1913 that rain storms led to floodwaters from the Great Miami River reaching Dayton, Ohio– causing the Great Dayton Flood, which lasted another five days. The volume of water that passed through Dayton during this storm equaled the monthly flow over Niagara Falls; downtown Dayton was submerged up to 20 feet.
More than 360 people died; 65,000 were displaced; nearly 1,400 horses and 2,000 other domestic animals died. 20,000 homes were destroyed and buildings were moved off of their foundations. Property damage to homes, businesses, factories, and railroads was estimated at more than $100 million in 1913 dollars (more than $2 billion in today’s dollars).
“The highly motivated people in society are the ones causing all the trouble. It’s not the lazy unmotivated folks sitting in front of a TV eating potato chips who bother anyone.”*…
Americans consume about 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips annually– around 6.6 pounds per person. A history of our favorite snack…
When Covid-19 forced people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. The crispy treats enjoyed around a $350 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. When the chips are down, it seems, Americans gobble them up.
Any search for the origins of this signature finger food must lead to George Crum (born George Speck), a 19th-century chef of Native and African American descent who made his name at Moon’s Lake House in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York. As the story goes, one day in 1853, the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was eating at Moon’s when he ordered his fried potatoes be returned to the kitchen because they were too thick. Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced some potatoes as slenderly as he could, fried them to a crisp and sent them out to Vanderbilt as a prank. Rather than take the gesture as an insult, Vanderbilt was overjoyed.
Other patrons began asking for Crum’s “Saratoga Chips,” which soon became a hit far beyond Upstate New York. In 1860, Crum opened his own restaurant near Saratoga known as Crum’s House or Crum’s Place, where a basket of potato chips sat invitingly on every table. Crum oversaw the restaurant until retiring over 30 years later; in 1889, a New York Herald writer called him “the best cook in America.” Crum died in 1914, but today’s astounding variety of potato chips, from cinnamon-and-sugar Pringles to flamin’ hot dill pickle Lay’s, are a tribute to the man American Heritage magazine called “the Edison of grease”…
A fussy magnate, a miffed chef and the curious roots of the comfort food we hate to love: “How the Potato Chip Took Over America,” from @SmithsonianMag.
* George Carlin
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As we try to eat just one, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1965 that a storage tank ruptured and three million gallons of soybean oil flooded streets in Mankato, Minnesota, then flowed in the Mississippi River.
Stan Eichten was working in the office of Honeymead Soybean Products [the largest oil-processing facility in the world at the time]… when one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history hit.
“There was a roar, like an explosion,” said Eichten of the rupture of a soy oil storage tank that sent millions of gallons into Mankato streets and the Minnesota River. “It was almost like a tsunami. There was oil 2 or 3 feet deep all over.”
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