From Stanford University
Preparing for climate change-induced weather disasters
The news sounds grim: mounting scientific evidence indicates climate change will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather that affects larger areas and lasts longer.
However, we can reduce the risk of weather-related disasters with a variety of measures, according to Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow Chris Field.
Field will discuss how to prepare for and adapt to a new climate at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston. Field’s talk, “Weather Extremes: Coping With the Changing Risks,” will be part of a symposium called “Media: Communicating Science, Uncertainty and Impact” 3-4:30, Feb. 16, room 204 of the Hynes Convention Center.
While climate change’s role in tornadoes and hurricanes remains unknown, Field says, the pattern is increasingly clear when it comes to heat waves, heavy rains and droughts. Field explains that the risk of climate-related disaster is tied to the overlap of weather, exposure and vulnerability of exposed people, ecosystems and investments.
While this means that moderate extremes can lead to major disasters, especially in communities subjected to other stresses or in cases when extremes are repeated, it also means that prepared, resilient communities can manage even severe extremes.
During the past 30 years, economic losses from weather-related disasters have increased. The available evidence points to increasing exposure (an increase in the amount and/or value of the assets in harm’s way) as the dominant cause of this trend. Economic losses, however, present a very incomplete picture of the true impacts of disasters, which include human and environmental components. While the majority of the economic losses from weather-related disasters are in developed world, the overwhelming majority of deaths are in developing countries.
Withstanding these increasingly frequent events will depend on a variety of disaster preparations, early warning systems and well-built infrastructure, Field says. The most effective options tend to produce both immediate benefits in sustainable development and long-term benefits in reduced vulnerability. Solutions that emphasize a portfolio of approaches, multi-hazard risk reduction and learning by doing offer many advantages for resilience and sustainability. Some options may require transformation, including questioning assumptions and paradigms, and stimulating innovation.
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and the Melvin and Joan Lane professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford. He has been deeply involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 he was elected co-chair of Working Group 2 of the IPCC, which released a special report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” in 2012.
It really does take cojones to start your article with a flat out lie. Where is the “mounting scientific evidence”???? Where is it???
Here is the mounting scientific evidence and observations.
See also observations.
No trends in extreme weather
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/27/another-paper-shows-that-severe-weatherextreme-weather-has-no-trend-related-to-global-warming/
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/new-paper-shows-warming-causes.html
I suppose we will have to endure even more of this crap from those trying to hang on to their over paid jobs.
If you use models that assume the input of CO2, assume catastrophy then that is what you will get. For goodness sake CHANGE THE MODELS they are telling you LIES.
imdying says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Actually what hes saying is technically true lol. Property nowadays is more expensive so the economic loss is greater even though the storm intensity has dropped or the flooding is weaker.
If he has a strategy to fight inflation i’ll love to hear it.
———————————
That’s easy.
Stop government overblown spending.
cn
And the BS riddle continues: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SNOW_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-18-11-33-15
Mosher ,it is sad, and at the same time frightening, to witness the speed of your transformation from logician to phony post-normal advocacy. It is not easy to link drought with warming, first because there is no recent warming and second current droughts are not historically normal. So you are worried that we are not prepared for experiencing events like occurred in our past when we were not warming? I think you’ve been exchanging too much saliva with Ravitz.
ERRATA …..not historically abnormal
izen says:
February 18, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.
Even if they could show that “intensification of heavy precipitation events” has actually occurred over say the past 30 or 40 years (which is doubtful), they most certainly can’t show the human fingerprint. Oh, and the “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases” is just a convoluted way of saying that because of (assumed) manmade warming, there is an increased level of water vapor. But, keep on banging your bogus science drum, izen.
Less energy from the Sun should translate to a more mild weather system with less [not more] severe storms. As the cold moves from the Poles toward the equator, more snow [rain storms converted to snow] , later spring, fewer tropical hurricanes [less energy from the Sun]. This was the weather during the 1850s to 1900s.
It was Al Gore who gave a few years ago the final definition of ‘extremely hot’, the earth below our feet, millions of degrees.
Izen says:
What part of global are you missing here???? I remember being constantly told that the Medieval Warm Period only affected parts of the northern hemisphere and was not global (though disputed). Your extracts flat out admit these ‘alleged’ attributions weren’t even global. So there. 😉
Look at an ecofasc…friendly Province in Canada:
http://www.bcgreengames.ca/resources/for-parents/93-links.html
Agitprop to kids.
You know Steve, when I used to drive out of London on a hot summer’s day I noticed a noticeable drop in temperature as I headed out into the countryside. I wonder why? 😉
Just 2 points:
1) “autumn 2000” is just the weather and not the climate. Trends are the key. The claim is over-confident for a 3 month period.
2) Let’s look at something a model prepared earlier:
The meeting was on the 16th, it is now the 19th.
Any idea what his recommendations were?
Hmmmm –
““Media: Communicating Science, Uncertainty and Impact” 3-4:30, Feb. 16, room 204 of the Hynes Convention Center. ”
Didn’t they misspell Hyenas?
ferd berple says:
February 18, 2013 at 10:18 pm
Very well said. Developers and local governments have constructed so many “levees” on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers that they have shifted the flood plains – or maybe I should say that they have created new flood plains. As many informed people observed in 1993, the flood disaster in Missouri was mostly man made.
TomRude says:
February 18, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Thanks, Tom. That is what I thought. I asked because I am not up to speed on water vapor.
You’re welcome Theo!