There was so much quotable material flying around this week due to Hurricane Sandy, I could probably have a QOTW every day. But I thought this one was particularly well done:
It is true that Sandy was a human-caused disaster. We build cities on the coast. We don’t adequately protect them. We don’t heed evacuation warnings. That is where the blame lies for this one, not climate change.
See Eric Berger’s SciGuy column in the Houston Chronicle:
There will probably be fewer Sandy-like storms in the future
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Ah, sorry, Bertram: you beat me.
Richard111 says:
November 4, 2012 at 12:34 am
Not many cities built on mountains. When our hunter-gatherer ancestors took up farming the most productive and easily worked land was on river banks in the flood plain area. Old habits die hard.
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Actually the Woodland Indians that occupied the land I now own were not that dumb. My land rises over 100 feet beyond the river’s 100 yr flood plain. That is where I built my house and that is where I have found handfuls of Indian artifacts from various time periods. (Identifed by and donated to N.C. state traveling museum) You farm the flood plain but you live up the hill away from the mosquitoes and water moccasins. Since the women do the farming and water carrying the guys are not ‘inconvenienced’
If you know what you are looking at it is pretty easy to identify a flood plain and make sure you are not making camp on it.
Actually we r not out of the woods just yet. Likely to x0ontinue evry autumn until 2020
@ur momisugly Gail. That’s a matter of topography: the flood plain may be tens of miles wide.
@ur momisugly “Dr Ware”
Nice try at hijacking the thread, troll.
The Jamestown, VA settlers in early 1600s knew very well to stay away from the ocean. They traveled well into the Chesapeake Bay & settled a protected, elevated river peninsula that could also be defended (even from wolves). Settling near the coast would have been insanity to them.
Bertram Felden says:
“But reference to fairy tales of any kind adds nothing to a rational debate.”
Yea, valuable lessons could never be communicated via a story. /sarc
There is a theory that the Mound-building Indians built their mounds to have high ground on the flood plains. It didn’t require UFO’s or heavy equipment. If everyone just transported three basketfuls of dirt a day, each person moves a thousand baskets a year. In a decade you had a pretty big pile of dirt, and a dry place in the floods, while harvesting from the richest soil. (Unfortunately some of those various societies apparently grew too dependant on corn and didn’t get enough meat; skeletons got smaller with time, and then the Little Ice Age stressed them out. However some were still around when the Spanish showed up.)
People have waterfronts because the sea provides both food and easy transport. It is simply too much work to roll your fishing boat down from the hills every morning. However the fishmen up in Maine were pretty smart, when it came to sensing when a big blow was coming, and finding a good hide-out for their boats.
People are gamblers by nature. Some get bored without a challange, and climb risky mountains and put themselves in danger just for the fun of it. Others gamble on the stock market. Still others live by the sea.
However there are some reasonable steps that could be taken to lessen the damages of superstorms. The NYC subways should have had floodgates put in years ago.
Gail Combs says:
November 4, 2012 at 5:12 am
Of course the other reason to live on a ridge was that it was easier to defend. It was not only floods that could kill you.
Sleepalot says: @ur momisugly November 4, 2012 at 5:43 am
@ur momisugly Gail. That’s a matter of topography: the flood plain may be tens of miles wide.
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They had that figured out too.
What we see in modern times is what I ran into. As a northerner I was denied permission to build on my 100+ acres because it was “All flood plain” I had to get a letter from the USGS stating where the 100 yr flood plain actually was on my survey map and that my proposed site was 100 ft above that elevation.
A few years later a “good ole’ boy” inherited about 1000 ac (mostly flood plain) and wanted to sell it off as 10+ ac buildable lots thereby skirting the subdivision codes. There are now several houses built in the area where I saw a minimum of three feet of standing water after Hurricane Frances hit the area in 2004. That was just before I bought the land. I hiked down towards the Cape Fear River and found the area flooded a good 1/2 mile from the normal river bank. Great farmland but as my geology prof said, Only a fool builds IN the river and the flood plain IS the river it just doesn’t use it often.
The person approving the building site has not changed since 2004.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/#comment-190
I have been able to prove that this current fit is correct by analyzing all data on maxima since 1942 from the Elmendorf Air Force base in Anchorage. It gives me the same (blue) curve going downwards from 1972 to 1942 as well.
This means that we are currently hovering at the bottom of the curve, at a maximum cooling rate for the next 8 years or so. We also have the normal polar-equator differential and autumn differential. It is therefore likely that a few more of these type of storms will happen, and they will happen soon.
Whilst I agree with the bible quotes here, we also have to think smart, (pray and work) seeing as perhaps we did not build on rock.
New York, certainly, with so many inhabitants has to do more to protect itself by building floodgates or do something to prevent flooding again.
Chris Edwards says:
“Isnt there a really old book that tells us not to build houses on sand?”
Actually, the people already knew that to build on sand was foolish. That knowledge was being used to illustrate the foolishness of not following wise teachings such as the Golden Rule.
Brady says:
November 4, 2012 at 2:25 am
On a closer reading … it looks like he is bailing out (due to obvious contrary evidence) of the “CAGW means more stronger hurricanes” belief and replacing it with “CAGW means less stronger hurricanes” belief. The CAGW part of the original belief stays in.
Not much of a change. 🙁
Or am I missing something here?
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From a previous article: “The bottom line is that climate change is unquestionably having an effect on the weather around us by raising the average temperature of the planet. This is producing warmer temperatures and very likely increasing the magnitude of droughts. However, it is a big stretch to go from there to blaming Sandy on climate change. It’s a stretch that is just not supported by science at this time.” Extreme weather in Texas caused by global warming. NYC – not so much.
Science Question: (shocking, I know)
Beach erosion has been a long-cited problem. As we can see in New Jersey footage, about 5 feet of additional sand is now covering seaside property in some spots, some got less while some more.
Have we seen the natural method of beach replenishment? Was there a long-lasting net gain? Or was this the ocean edge getting pushed farther inland and what we saw was the pile-up, it was a net loss when over?
Do they still give out Federal funds to northern cities for snow removal and remediation?
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg has endorsed Barak Obama as the candidate with the better chance of stopping climate change:
River front property is the same thing. People buy that kind of land at a premium price (but I sure don’t know why) then continue to struggle with rules and regulations preventing them from doing anything about their constantly wet basement, wet fields, eroding river bank, ice jams and floods. And if they own it long enough they end up having the river go dry from drought, or change course somewhere up stream and then the river is on someone else’s property. Better to buy dry land and sink a well nice and deep. Much cheaper.
As mortals, we are all doomed. You can’t blame climate change for that either.
Hu McCulloch says:
November 4, 2012 at 10:07 am
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg has endorsed Barak Obama as the candidate with the better chance of stopping climate change:
“Our Climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in NYC and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be eough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action. (NYTimes 11/2/12, p. 1)”
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So the way combat CAGW is for the Government to give away free gas? Or is endorsing Obama the way to get free gas just before election day?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/department_of_defense_setting_up_XK9Cli2PXUEFWZC0d8abMM
(PS Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve no objection to the people getting help. Just the politics involved.)
PS Gail, glad you’re back.
Gunga Din says:
November 4, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Seconded!!
Who needs skeptics when we have our alarmist friends?
Just like
and back in the real world
There is an interesting quote from Kevin Trenberth in the article.
(emphasis mine)
Now would this be the same Kevin Trenberth who just 12 months ago was advocating that we reverse the null hypothesis?
Has Trenberth now reversed his position on reversing the null hypthosis?
There may be hope for the field if Trenberth has had a change of heart.
Berger is no skeptic. He’s a Mann deciple. Literally.