Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

[basilio]

Hurricance Harvey is trashing Houston and dumping record amounts of rain.
Catastrophic Flooding Happening Now in Houston as Harvey's Death Toll Rises to 3
By Pam Wright
Aug 27 2017 06:00 AM EDT
weather.com


Hundreds of High-Water Rescues in Houston

Catastrophic flooding in Houston prompts hundreds of high-water rescues.

Story Highlights
Two people were killed in flooding in Houston, raising the death toll from Harvey to three.

Hundreds of water rescues were underway in the Houston metro as water levels rose.

Feet of water is reportedly in homes across Houston.

Hobby airport is closed due to the storm.


Thousands of homes are taking on water and hundreds of people are trapped and stranded in rising floodwaters across the Houston metro after Harvey dumped more than 20" of rain. The death toll from Harvey has risen to at least 3 as hundreds of water rescues are underway across the area.

“There is life-threatening, catastrophic flooding happening now in Southeast Harris County,” Jeff Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control District told The Weather Channel.

Lindner said water had overtopped Interstate 10, that there had been more than 400 water rescues overnight in the Houston area and that hundreds more were stranded in cars across roadways in the area.
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-harvey-houston-texas-impacts

 

[basilio]

Relating back to my previous post on the current crisis in Houston.

Houston is the centre for some of the largest petro-chemical works in the US. The risk of an environmental/economic catastrophe as a result of a direct hit by a hurricance is a big concern

Houston fears climate change will cause catastrophic flooding: 'It's not if, it's when'
Human activity is worsening the problem in an already rainy area, and there could be damage worthy of a disaster movie if a storm hits the industrial section

.....
Disaster movie-style threat to Houston Ship Channel
While residents battle for local improvements, there are predictions worthy of a disaster movie for what could happen if a powerful hurricane barrels directly into Houston’s industrial east. “If we get 20ft plus of water up the Houston Ship Channel it will be apocalyptic. I think all of us that have studied hurricanes are absolutely petrified about a big storm flooding the Houston Ship Channel and basically causing a number of those storage tanks to become unmoored and releasing their contents,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center at Rice University.

“There’s a lot of very dangerous materials that are generally handled, all things considered, fairly well, but they’re not designed against 20ft floods and if we have that it’s just going to be an incredibly bleak situation,” he said.

The coastal area from Galveston to Houston is home to several hundred thousand people, Nasa’s Johnson Space Center, the US’s second-biggest seaport in terms of total tonnage, some of the nation’s largest refineries and its biggest petrochemical complex.

Every year we put more people and critical assets in harm’s way. We keep rolling the dice and the stakes become higher

Sam Brody
It is not lost on environmental activists that those refineries, as part of the fossil fuels industry, may be imperiled by extreme weather linked to climate change.

As a ProPublica/Texas Tribune investigation pointed out last year, had Ike been a little stronger and not changed course at the last minute in 2008, Blackburn’s nightmare scenario might have become reality.

According to the SSPEED Center, a 24ft storm surge along the Ship Channel would cause about 90m gallons of crude oil and chemical substances to rush into neighbourhoods and Galveston Bay – an event that a 2015 report claims “could easily become the worst environmental disaster in US history”.

To say nothing of the economic impact on the region and the nation – a lengthy shutdown of south-east Texas’s facilities would be felt all over the country as products such as gasoline and jet fuel would become scarcer and more expensive.

A multibillion-dollar coastal barrier has long been on the wish list – but is far from being realised, since there is as of yet no consensus over the design, implementation and funding. “If you look historically at major hurricane enters Galveston Bay every 15-20 years, so it’s going to happen,” said Brody, the professor.

“It is something that keeps me awake at night every June that rolls around, hurricane season, because it’s not if, it’s just when – and every year we put more people and critical assets in harm’s way. We keep rolling the dice and the stakes become higher.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/16/texas-flooding-houston-climate-change-disaster

 

[wayneL]

I knew The Guardian wouldn't disappoint

 

[basilio]

I knew The Guardian wouldn't disappoint

And neither do you...

 

[basilio]

Keep an eye on Insurance stocks in the next few days.



Hurricane Harvey: catastrophic flooding 'beyond anything experienced' in Houston

• Greg Porter and Jason Samenow

496 reading now
The worst fears of flooding are starting to be realised with Harvey as it unloads some of the most extreme rainfall Houston and other parts of Southeast Texas has ever witnessed. And much more rain is still to come.

"Catastrophic flooding in the Houston metropolitan area is expected to worsen," the National Weather Service said Sunday morning.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/wor...g-experienced-in-houston-20170827-gy5bat.html

 

[orr]

I knew The Guardian wouldn't disappoint

Houston NASA Hansen.... You're not the only one to see the obvious connections WayneL.... James Hansen is at the bottom of this. My guess is he's purposely left the plug in, and he's down there now making sure no one pulls it out...
Just wait till Breightbart or Dellingpole gets the scoop on this, it'll blow the roof off the whole global warming scam.

And come to think of it, 'where's Flannery?'

 

[wayneL]

Okay let's see the trend ladies.... unadjusted.

 

[orr]

With the unprecedented 'Biblical' flooding of Houston it's an opportune time to get with lord and happy clap my way to born-again redemption. Timing with so many things is 'everything'; And now being the vessel of received truth and my duty to proselytise; Surely who cannot behold Gods wrath on the Fossil Fuel Gomorrah, Houston, Texas... Now being cleansed and Baptised by his own godly works. See behold and repent...
That's right sinners... How was I so oblivious for so long to the reeking stench of the brimstone direct from the fires of hell through the port hole that was the Caltex refinery Kurnell... Beelzebub cast thy out...Ahh now the light. Falling on solar panels everywhere.... notably obvious on more than their fair share of Churches...
Mysterious ways....

 

[Tisme]

With the unprecedented 'Biblical' flooding of Houston it's an opportune time to get with lord and happy clap my way to born-again redemption. ...

How about this instead:

 

[basilio]

Houston is going under and of course because it's First World and US everyone is all over it.

However ... have you noticed what is happening in India ?
Mumbai paralysed by floods as India and region hit by heaviest monsoon rains in years
More than 1,000 people killed in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent weeks and millions forced from their homes

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Monsoon rains bring India’s financial capital Mumbai to standstill

Wednesday 30 August 2017 16.26 AEST First published on Wednesday 30 August 2017 13.35 AEST

Heavy monsoon rains have brought India’s financial capital to a halt, with authorities struggling to evacuate people with the scheduled high tide adding to the chaos.

Incessant rain flooded several parts of Mumbai on Tuesday and paralysed train services used by millions of commuters daily, with many stranded at stations and hundreds of others walking home through waist-deep water on railway tracks.

Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.

Thousands, some abandoning their water-logged cars, waded through waist-deep water to reach home after some parts of the city received as much as 297.6mm (11.72in) of rainfall. Children were sent home early from school.

Weather officials are forecasting heavy rains to continue over the next 24 hours and have urged people to stay indoors. A high tide at 1105 GMT amid the downpour led to water logging of up to 5ft in some parts of the city.
Floods have killed more than 1,000 people in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent weeks and forced millions from their homes in the region’s worst monsoon disaster in recent years.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nd-region-hit-by-worst-monsoon-rains-in-years

 

[luutzu]

Houston is going under and of course because it's First World and US everyone is all over it.

However ... have you noticed what is happening in India ?
Mumbai paralysed by floods as India and region hit by heaviest monsoon rains in years
More than 1,000 people killed in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent weeks and millions forced from their homes

Current Time 0:00
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Duration Time 0:41
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Progress: 0%
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Monsoon rains bring India’s financial capital Mumbai to standstill

Wednesday 30 August 2017 16.26 AEST First published on Wednesday 30 August 2017 13.35 AEST

Heavy monsoon rains have brought India’s financial capital to a halt, with authorities struggling to evacuate people with the scheduled high tide adding to the chaos.

Incessant rain flooded several parts of Mumbai on Tuesday and paralysed train services used by millions of commuters daily, with many stranded at stations and hundreds of others walking home through waist-deep water on railway tracks.

Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.

Thousands, some abandoning their water-logged cars, waded through waist-deep water to reach home after some parts of the city received as much as 297.6mm (11.72in) of rainfall. Children were sent home early from school.

Weather officials are forecasting heavy rains to continue over the next 24 hours and have urged people to stay indoors. A high tide at 1105 GMT amid the downpour led to water logging of up to 5ft in some parts of the city.
Floods have killed more than 1,000 people in India, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent weeks and forced millions from their homes in the region’s worst monsoon disaster in recent years.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nd-region-hit-by-worst-monsoon-rains-in-years

I guess we need to wait for 100%, literally fool-proof evidence before we should get "hysterical" about "Climate Change".

Got to be definitely sure whether it was CC that causes all these death and destruction before we'd waste money investing in clean and renewable energy that also create jobs, innovation and all that rubbish.

In other news, heard reports that certain oil/chemical refineries have a built in business plan to get rid of their chemical/toxic waste: store it in a pool or tank, wait for a storm and opps, there it goes with the storm. So smart yet so stupid.

 

[basilio]

Anyone for a cold shower and reality check on where we are heading with CC ?

Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny
Ian Dunlop
Scientific reticence allows politicians to neglect the real dangers we face. But waiting for perfect information means it will be too late to act



‘In the magical thinking of Australian policymakers, a pathway of gradual change, constructed over many decades in a growing, prosperous, coal-fired world stretches enticingly before us.’ Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

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Monday 11 September 2017 02.27 BST Last modified on Monday 11 September 2017 02.36 BST

Three decades ago when serious debate on human-induced climate change began globally, a great deal of statesmanship was on display. A preparedness to recognise that this was an issue which transcended nation states, ideologies and political parties. An issue which had to be addressed proactively in the long-term interests of humanity, even if the existential nature of climate risk was far less clear cut than it is today.

Then, as global institutions were put in place to take up this challenge and the extent of change this would impose on the fossil-fuel dominated world became more obvious, the forces of resistance mobilised. Today, despite the diplomatic triumph of the Paris climate agreement, debate around climate change policy has never been more dysfunctional, indeed Orwellian, particularly in Australia.

In his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a double-speak totalitarian state where most of the population accepts “the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.”

Orwell could have been writing about climate change and policymaking.

International agreements talk of limiting global warming to 1.5–2°C, but in reality they set the world on a path of 3–5°C. Goals are reaffirmed, only to be abandoned. Coal, by definition, is “clean”. Just 1°C of warming is already dangerous, but this cannot be said. The planetary future is hostage to myopic, national self-interest. Action is delayed on the assumption that as yet unproven technologies will save the day, decades hence. The risks are existential, but it is “alarmist” to say so. A one-in-two chance of missing a goal is normalised as reasonable.

Climate policymaking for years now has been cognitively dissonant, “a flagrant violation of reality”. So the lack of understanding among the public and elites of the full measure of the climate challenge is unsurprising. Yet most Australians sense where we are heading: three-quarters of people see climate change as a catastrophic risk and half see our way of life ending within the next 100 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ence-is-watered-down-under-political-scrutiny

 

[SirRumpole]

I find it interesting how the world cooperated over CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer and yet seems unable to get together over AGW and the greater risk that it poses to life on earth.

 

[orr]

I find it interesting how the world cooperated over CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer and yet seems unable to get together over AGW and the greater risk that it poses to life on earth.

Naomi Oreskis addresses this in the Book "Merchants of Doubt'(highly recommend this read) . The short answer is that there was no down side for the vested interests as there were plenty of alternatives were immediately available for industry.
Interestingly the same atmospheric sampling programme that led strategic military planners in the 1950s to conclusions about CO2 warming was instrumental in the work on CFC's in the70's & 80's.

 

[basilio]

Why are Forest Fires raging in the US ? What is our summer looking like ?


Has Climate Change Intensified 2017’s Western Wildfires?
It was supposed to be a quiet year.

A firefighter battles the Ponderosa Fire east of Oroville, California, in late August. Noah Berger / Reuters

• Robinson Meyer

This wasn’t supposed to be a bad year for Western wildfires.

Last winter, a weak La Niña bloomed across the Pacific. It sent flume after flume of rain to North America and irrigated half the continent. Water penetrated deep into the soil of Western forests, and mammoth snowdrifts stacked up across the Sierra Nevadas. California’s drought ended in the washout.

Yet fires are now raging across the West. More than two dozen named fires currently burn across Washington and Oregon. More than one million acres have burned in Montana, an area larger than Rhode Island, in the Treasure State’s third-worst fire season on record. And the largest brushfire in the history of Los Angeles currently threatens hundreds of homes in Burbank.

Canada may be experiencing an even worse year for wildfires: 2.86 million acres have burned in British Columbia, the largest area ever recorded in the province.

So what happened? How did a wet Western winter lead to a sky-choking summer?

The answer lies in the summer’s record-breaking heat, say wildfire experts. Days of near-100-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures cooked the Mountain West in early July, and a scorching heat wave lingered over the Pacific Northwest in early August.

“This will become an important year for [anecdotes about] the importance of temperature. Despite the fact that these forests were really soaked down this winter and spring, these heat waves have dried things out enough to promote really large fires,” says Park Williams, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

“This heat wave is having a way worse influence on fire than it would in absence of human-caused warming.”
In other words, the weeks of heat that baked the West in July and August were enough to wipe away some of the fire-dampening effect of the winter storms.

“The last 60 to 90 days have been exceptionally warm and dry, the perfect recipe for drying out fuels (the one ingredient besides ignitions you need for fire in these systems),” said John Abatzoglou, a professor of geography at the University of Idaho, in an email. “I was running a few numbers this morning, and the last 60 days have been record warm from Spokane, Washington, to Medford, Oregon; both Seattle and Missoula earlier this summer set records for the longest number of days without measurable rain.”

This excessive heat can have an outsize effect on the size of forest fires. For more than three decades, wildfire researchers have known that fire and aridity, which is controlled by heat, exist in an exponential relationship. Every degree of warming does more to promote fire than the previous degree of warming, Williams said.

“Now, thinking about temperature trends due to human-caused climate change, we think that the western United States is 1.5 [degrees] Celsius, or 3 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than it would be in absence of climate change. And there’s a heat wave on top of that,” said Williams. “Because of the exponential influence of temperature, that means that this heat wave is having a way worse influence on fire than it would in absence of human-caused warming.”

In the runaway consequences of each additional degree of warming, wildfires are a “canary in the coal mine” for the effects of climate change, Williams said.

And global warming is already having an effect on wildfire. In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Williams and Abatzoglou found that the total area burned in the western United States over the past 33 years was double the size it would have been without any human-caused warming.

“The added forest fire area—due to just the degree and a half Celsius of warming—equaled the area of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined,” Williams told me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...7-so-bad-for-wildfires-climate-change/539130/

 

[basilio]

A wrap up of the past week on Planet Earth.

When the Planet Looks Like a Climate-Change Ad
“We kept on trying to wrap our heads around [that forecast] as we made it.”

An image from the satellite GOES-16, taken last week NOAA / CIRA / Colorado State University

• Robinson Meyer
• Sep 12, 2017

It takes a lot of unusual weather to surprise the director of the National Weather Service. But speaking on Sunday from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in College Park, Maryland, Louis Uccellini couldn’t contain his shock.

“I tell people to look at the two forecasts we’ve made over the last two weeks,” he told me.“We forecast 50 inches of rainfall over eastern Texas. That was a forecast that we kept on trying to wrap our heads around as we made it. And then it verified—and we had to wrap our heads around that, too.”

He continued: “And then, for [Irma], we were predicting a significant right turn in the track. This right turn was being advertised days ahead of time. And that verified, too.”

It has been a stirring month for weather in North America. After a decade-long drought, two major hurricanes made landfall in the continental United States. Record-setting fires raged across the Pacific Northwest. The largest earthquake in a century struck southern Mexico.

There was so much unusual weather that The New York Times ran a front-page story lightly chiding people for thinking that “the End Times were getting in a few dress rehearsals.”

One image from last week seems to best encapsulate the historic weather insanity. It was taken by the newest weather satellite in NOAA’s fleet, known as GOES-16, on the afternoon of Friday, September 8.

CIRA / NOAA
In this image, you can see three hurricanes spin across the tropical Atlantic. Left to right, they are: Hurricane Katia, which made landfall in Mexico that night; Hurricane Irma, which was passing between Cuba and the Bahamas; and Hurricane José, which still churns in the open ocean.

But they are not the only visible environmental disasters. Across the western United States, you can see light-gray smoke pouring off the ground and drifting into the atmosphere. Those fumes are the product of massive wildfires burning across Montana, southern California, and the Pacific Northwest.

And there is a third type of disaster, ongoing when this picture was taken, that’s not visible: the southern Mexico earthquake, which left dozens dead.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...dinary-week-in-north-american-weather/539544/

 

[luutzu]

I find it interesting how the world cooperated over CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer and yet seems unable to get together over AGW and the greater risk that it poses to life on earth.

Quoting Chomsky: Ozone depletion kill mainly White people. So it must be dealt with like civilisation depended on it.

Climate Change kill mainly coloured and poor people. The rich, mainly White, people can simply close their door, switch on the air con then jack up the prices of everything.

So you got population control, higher profit margin, potential wars that needs proper arms sales... then the softening of ice for easier drilling. So if you can look past the deaths and destruction to other people, it's pretty dam good.

 

[Tisme]

Quoting Chomsky: Ozone depletion kill mainly White people. So it must be dealt with like civilisation depended on it.

Climate Change kill mainly coloured and poor people. The rich, mainly White, people can simply close their door, switch on the air con then jack up the prices of everything.

So you got population control, higher profit margin, potential wars that needs proper arms sales... then the softening of ice for easier drilling. So if you can look past the deaths and destruction to other people, it's pretty dam good.

So what you are saying is coloured people are valuable as consumers .... if they have money that is?

 

[luutzu]

So what you are saying is coloured people are valuable as consumers .... if they have money that is?

Coloured and/or Poor. There are poor White people too aren't there?

But everyone with money is valuable. That's Money 101

I'm just repeating what Chomsky said. Not sure why people call him a Lefty as though it's synonymous with being an idiot.

Anyway, he was saying that when the scientists said there's a hole in the Southern Ozone, the "international community" doesn't gives two cents about it. I mean, the South has poor coloured folks and a few British convicts so who cares.

Then a few years later the Northern Ozone also has a hole in it... well UV is going to kill a lot of fair-skinned European sunbathing on their yachts and "the international community" must work together

----

Put a cap on insurance premiums, no wiggle legalese and no state-funded natural disaster reliefs. Watch how many bankers and insurers will push for that green future.

 

[SirRumpole]

Climate Change kill mainly coloured and poor people. The rich, mainly White, people can simply close their door, switch on the air con then jack up the prices of everything.

That's bs, Luutzu, Miami and Florida is a rich white (mainly) community and they just got battered. Watch for a change in policy.