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Record floods and extreme weather: Florida’s floods are linked to climate change
Climate Change Impacts Hit Florida
floods
Mother Nature, Pumped Up By Warmer Atmosphere, Swamps Alberta
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“If you think mitigated climate change is expensive, try unmitigated climate change.” Dr Richard Gammon
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The City of Calgary, home riding of Canada’s climate-change-denying, scientist-muzzling Prime Minister, ordered the evacuation of the entire downtown earlier today because of catastrophic flooding from the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Approximately 75,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Calgary as water levels rose sharply after torrential rainfalls related to an “upside-down” jet stream. The Weather Network put it this way:
An upside-down weather pattern took shape across western North America earlier in the week. By ‘upside-down’ we’re referring to a jet stream pattern that causes warmer temperatures to the north than the south. Dramatically, this was exemplified on Thursday (when the flooding began) with Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories being the hottest place in all of Canada at 31 C. Meanwhile, Calgary only reached 17°C. Click here to read full article.
Hmmm – a broken jet stream, a melting Arctic, a modern-day “Mordor” in the tar sands, a planet full of politicians reluctant to act decisively on climate change, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Any connection, ya think?
Calgary’s mayor is warning that the worst flooding is yet to come.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/aWkT1HkI-Yk]
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My sympathies are with the unfortunate people in Calgary and surrounding areas who are feeling the devastation of this flash flooding. This shouldn’t happen to anybody, any time. As a climate activist, I hope that Canadians see this – finally – as a wake up call. There are millions of people around the world – in Bangladesh, in the Philippines, in Africa, and in South America – who have been feeling the devastating effects of climate change for years. The global poor have already been impacted by climate change, often losing their homes, their source of food and even their lives because of unstable weather events related to climate change, caused by carbon dioxide emissions to which they have contributed almost nothing.
“Unmuzzled” climate scientist Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa has this to say about the connection between extreme weather events and climate change:
Torrential rains in some regions are causing massive floods while in other locales record droughts are occurring with higher frequency and severity and areal extent around the globe. Global food production is being hit hard, leading to large price increases and political instability. Areas under drought are experiencing numerous massive forest fires of incredible ferocity. The statistics of extreme weather events has changed for the worst due to changes in the location, speed, and waviness of the jet streams which guide weather patterns and separate cold and dry northern air from warm and moist southern air. The jet streams have changed since the equator to north-pole temperature difference has decreased due to the huge temperature rise in the Arctic. The huge temperature rise in the Arctic is due to a collapse in the area of highly reflective snow and ice, which is caused by melting. The melting is from warming from the increase of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning. The Arctic sea ice and spring snow cover will vanish within a few years and the weather extremes will increase at least 10x.
Beckwith goes on to give this advice:
What can you do? Go talk to your politicians and friends about climate change and the need to slash fossil fuel emissions. Immediately. Cut and paste my comments above and post them on facebook, send them to newspapers, and educate yourself on the science behind all the above linkages. Leave my name on or take it off and plagiarise all you want, just get this knowledge out there…
Folks, unless we act together and demand better from our elected representatives, the worst is yet to come.
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More links:
10 Signs Global Warming is Happening Now
Alberta Floods: Why is there so much rain?
Climate catastrophes Like Alberta Floods Have The Potential To Shatter Political Careers
Photogallery: Calgary Streets Before And After The Floods
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
It’s a warm July 4th morning here in northern Ontario, but looking at the news these days makes me think that this is one of the best places in North America to be right now. Our electricity works, there’s no flooding or wildfires near by, and when the humidex index gets to be unbearable, there’s always the lake to cool off in. We don’t have air conditioning, because the really hot days (for us, that’s around 30 degrees Celsius) are never so extended that the house becomes unlivable; we get by with ceiling and floor fans, and by jumping in the lake. The worst thing we are contending with these days is a nasty cutworm infestation in many gardens in the community, including ours. We’ve seen cutworms that “chop” down seedlings, but these awful ones climb up into the plants and destroy them by devouring them. Here’s a photo a friend shared recently, grieving the destruction of her usually incredibly productive garden:
Our garden looks a little better. Mark is using Safer’s BTK Biological Insecticide to control them. But it’s discouraging for gardeners like Chrissy and Mark who have taken the time and effort to grow much of their garden from seed, starting indoors in February and March. And it’s a timely reminder that although we 21st Century humans like to think we’re not as dependent on our natural environment as we used to be (otherwise why would we be trashing it the way we are?), in fact it doesn’t take much to upset things as important to life as our food supply.
Speaking of food, I’ve spent my morning processing some of our plentiful rhubarb harvest. I made rhubarb ginger jam yesterday, and cooling on the counter right now are the jars of rhubarb orange marmalade, “blubarb” raspberry jam, and rhubarb sauce that I cooked up this morning.
Inspired by all the jam-making, I also made bannock for my family this morning.
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Here’s the recipe for Bannock, which is a type of non-yeast bread that is part of the First Nations culture here in northern Ontario. Often it’s fried and/or made with lard. I’ve adjusted a recipe from my well-used Blueberries and Polar Bears cookbook to make it lower-fat but still, according to feedback so far, just as tasty. I like the recipe because you don’t need to cut in the butter or margerine (anything that makes a recipe easier is good, in my books). The trick is to bake it on a preheated stoneware pan or pizza stone:
4 cups flour (I used half wholewheat and half white. I’ve also used spelt before)
2 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine (I use a combination of butter and grapeseed oil)
2 1/2 cups milk.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees, with pizza stone in the oven. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in mixing bowl (I use my kitchen aid mixer). Melt the butter in a medium sized bowl, add the milk, and stir. When well mixed, pour it into the flour mixture and stir until just blended. Spread the batter onto preheated pizza stone with your hands (you can use extra flour or dip your fingers in oil to prevent the dough from sticking to you). Bake at 425 degrees F for ~20 minutes. Yum.
I noticed that Anne Jisca over at Anne Jisca’s Healthy Pursuits just posted a Whole Wheat Bannock recipe today, too, if you want to compare.
So, Happy July 4th to all the American friends of 350orbust. Perhaps this Independence Day will mark the beginning of the kind of independence America (and the world) needs right now, freedom from our fossil fuel addiction. But first it’s going to have to hurt – a lot; I don’t think America is there yet, but it may be close, after this summer of extreme weather events. The tipping point could be impacts on food production in the “bread basket” of America, the Midwest (it, like much of the U.S., is experiencing a severe drought). As I recently read somewhere, change happens when the effort to resist change becomes more painful that the effort to change.
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Fire, Drought, and Floods: Scientists Call U.S. Summer A Global Warming Preview
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If this scenario isn’t acceptable to you, DO SOMETHING! Not sure where to start? Check out Citizens Climate Lobby, The Transition Network,or the Post Carbon Institute, to give just a few examples. Unplug the TV, which dumbs us all down, and find out everything you can about building resilience in your community and your family. Reach out to your friends and family, discuss what’s going on with the weather and what scientists (not Fox News!) are saying about it. Call your MP/Congressman or woman, or whoever represents you locally, regionally, and/or nationally, and tell them this is NOT okay with you. The window of opportunity to respond to this crisis is still open, just.This might be humanity’s finest hour, or our worst. It’s in our hands.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYsKt-eAjXk]
Remember, We Shouldn’t Make Connections Between Climate Change And All The Extreme Weather Events We’ve Been Experiencing Lately
From an op-ed by Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org, narrated and illustrated by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia.com:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0&feature=share]
The transcript of the original article:
“Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods — that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity — that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.
Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?
Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.
It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.””Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods — that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity — that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.
Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?
Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.
It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.”
Find out about 350.org’s Moving Planet on September 24, when people all around the world are joining together for Moving Planet–a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis. 350.org is inviting people to come out on the 24th on “bike, on skates, on a board, or just on foot. Come with your neighbors and your friends, your family and your co-workers. Come be part of something huge. It’s time to get moving on the climate crisis.” Click here to find out how to get involved.
More links:
Climate Change Has Arrived: Drowning Today, Parched Tomorrow
The Earth leads the news again. Fire & flood across continents. The nation-states are only supporting actors. What matters is people and our relationship with all of life. The nations and corporations and religions are losing their position. The Times says “Climate change has actually arrived.” No, at long last the Earth takes over completely.
The paragraph above from Reverend Billy Talen’s Facebook page today. Talen, founder of the Church of Life After Shopping, is a modern-day prophet, visionary, and performance artist who has been pointing out the dangers of the North American over-consumptive lifestyle in creative, attention-grabbing ways since 1996.
My scientist husband compared this summer’s weather to an experiment done in Chemistry class. Supersaturation occurs when a solid is added to a liquid and appears to be dissolving without visibly changing the liquid until the liquid becomes so saturated that, just by lightly tapping the side of the flask, the dissolved solid immediately crystallizes and sinks to the bottom. The earth is close to her “supersaturation point”, as the extreme weather events demonstrate. This analogy can also be extended to include the possibility that the number of weather catastrophes around the globe this summer, combined with the ecological and economic disaster of the BP oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico, could crystallize in people’s minds the reality of climate change and the limits of our finite planet. This shift in understanding needs to happen now, before we are any further down this planet-destructive, and ultimately self-destructive, path. Could this be the summer? Or, as someone commented on Rev Billy’s page, “I think we are being voted off the planet”.
More links:
In Weather Chaos, a Case For Global Warming
Reinventing Repower America: Our Only Hope For Winning the Climate Battle in America
Sonnenschiff Solar City Produces 4 Times The Energy It Consumes