Hurricane Season
With Hurricane Dean going to slam into the Yucatan tonight, with winds now at 150 mph and maybe intensifying, it’s not a bad time to consider some of the discussion about hurricanes. (If you like to track hurricanes, there’s no better place than the National Hurricane Center, with its terrific graphics and its up-to-the-hour information.)
I saw the aftermath of Wilma in Mexico a year and a half ago. The beaches were severely eroded, there were still blown-down trees in a lot of places, and reconstruction was going on everywhere. Wilma caused $3 billion in damage in 2005 and this storm could be stronger. Katrina, of course, is still very much on people’s minds, certainly with the folks in New Orleans, as hurricane season turns up a notch. I’m convinced that Katrina was a wake-up call to millions of Americans on climate change. The evidence of the devastation, all along the Gulf Coast, was just too stark to ignore. Whether or not there was a direct link between climate change and Katrina is moot, certainly. But there is no doubt that the potential for fury from our winds and waters was made eminently manifest.
What we do know is that hotter water makes for stronger hurricanes. We also know that the oceans have heated up in recent decades. Now an article from last week in the “Daily Nebraskan” says: The number of Atlantic hurricanes in an average season has doubled in the last century because of climate change, according to a new study. (I don’t think anyone can accuse this blog of relying solely on the MSM.) The timely paper that the article references is called “Heightened Tropical Cyclone Activity in the North Atlantic: Natural Variability or Climate Trend?” and it’s in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The authors conclude from their findings “…that the overall trend in SSTs and tropical cyclone and hurricane numbers is substantially influenced by greenhouse warming.”
I referenced Chris Mooney’s book, Storm World, in a post from last month - Surfin’ the Blogs. Chris writes eloquently about the intersection of science and politics. Chris also has a climate change blog, The Intersection. “Nature” has a superb climate change blog, “Climate Feedback.” They recently had a discussion of Storm World.
Who else has a view? The insurance companies! Premiums are rising fast in Florida. See Howls over hurricane insurance from the “Christian Science Monitor” today. Private insurers are running for high ground and leaving the state to pick up the tab. So, would you guess that the insurance companies think there are going to be more storms and more intense storms at that? I would. If you still think this is a shuck, go to the webpage on climate change for Lloyd’s of London.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I’m so glad you’re covering the hurricanes and the problems with post-Katrina reconstruction. Not only is it a wake-up call to imminent disaster, but a cogent summary of how hard it is to recover from such disasters. The most advanced economy in the world did not have a plan to meet such disaster. The city’s infrastructure is not geared toward evacuation (only bridges out, due to Southern Louisiana geography). The levees were inadequate, and the bridges do not have adequate provision for the broken down automobiles that inevitably occur in regions with poor people, little mass transportation, and limited access to gasoline and repairs. The reconstruction efforts, pitiful as they have been for individuals, have not made alteration in these basic systems or structures either–nor have they evaluated other at-risk areas of the U.S. for the events of climate change disasters. This would include the Gulf Coast but not be limited to it.
Futhermore, denial of the issue gets in the way of credible proactive planning. As a February 2006 article in the Washington Post reports, the NOAA, like some other agencies, has been censored over the issue of global warming, where the pursuit of technical knowledge has interfered with political agendas. You’ve probably already read it, but The WashPost article is here.
I collected a few of these government censorship allegations and undue influence problems in the present administration: see this.
At every step and every stage, the lessons of Katrina have been denied and subverted, and this is not only distasteful but dangerous to life, limb, property, and good government.
Bonnie (former ten-year N.O. resident)
August 27th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Thank, Bonnie. The censorship problem is a real one. I’ve touched on it a few times here, but not at great length. Chris Mooney at Intersection and David Roberts at Gristmill, among others, have written about this eloquently. (See the blogroll here for their sites.) See also the Union of Concerned Scientists on this. We do have one of the most universally respected climate scientists, James Hansen, who works for NASA, standing up in the face of repeated attempts to tone down or censor his work. We also have an international community of scientists working hard under the aegis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
On preparing for the effects of climate change, see the IPCC’s voluminous report from its Working Group II on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.” See the Climate Change Links at the main page here for a link to the IPCC.
Not incidentally, if you haven’t seen Bonnie’s work at the Central Asia blog for the Foreign Policy Assn., do yourself a favor and check out her in-depth and insightful commentary.