Tag: louisiana flooding
That Record-Breaking Heat Wave Isn’t A ‘Hoax’

That Record-Breaking Heat Wave Isn’t A ‘Hoax’

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable — what then? — George Orwell, 1984

 

As President Donald J. Trump was preparing to unleash a deluge of half-truths, misconceptions and outright lies about his environmental record, Mother Nature went to the podium first. She unleashed her own deluge — a “once-in-a-hundred-years” rainfall that made rivers of local streets, crashed through the roof of a D.C. Metro station and threatened historic documents stored in the National Archives by flooding its basement.

According to the National Weather Service, almost a month’s worth of rain fell in metropolitan Washington, D.C., over the course of an hour, the sort of extreme weather event that climate scientists associate with climate change. Warmer air holds more moisture, so climatologists have predicted more, much more, rainfall and, as a consequence, more flooding. (The melting of Arctic ice is raising sea levels, which will also increase flooding in coastal areas.)

Of course, the president never uttered the phrase “climate change” in his address on Monday (July 8). He never alluded in any way to the existential challenge of our time — a warming planet that threatens all human life. He and most of his Republican Party either deny global warming outright or look askance at scientific evidence that blames it on human activity.

According to Trump, who pulled out of the 2015 Paris Accords that might have ameliorated climate change, his administration has helped to curb greenhouse gases. “Since 2000, our nation’s energy-related carbon emissions have declined more than any other country on Earth,” he said. In fact, emissions had been trending downward until his presidency. In 2018, however, thanks in large part to Trump’s friendly policies toward polluters, emissions levels began to inch upward again, according to The Rhodium Group, an independent research organization.

Yet, Trump and his cult repeat their truth-inverting nonsense with straight faces. The president continues to dismiss experts, to marginalize scientists and even to ignore the reports of military experts, who point to the national security implications of climate change. And his supporters, from Mitch McConnell to Midwestern farmers who suffer amid frequent flooding, continue to sip the Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, back here in reality, another tropical storm, this one named Barry, churns along the Gulf Coast, bringing yet more high winds and flooding. Barry’s winds bring peril, but the greater danger is from rising waters.

The National Weather Service has warned of flooding throughout eastern Louisiana, southern and central Mississippi and southeastern Arkansas. That area includes one of the nation’s great cities, New Orleans, which has been hit by deadly flooding before and will be hit again and again as climate change intensifies. When the calamitous Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, its rainfall breached levees even though the Mississippi River crested, then, at just 2 feet. Because of spring flooding, the Mississippi could surge to as high as 19 feet in New Orleans, according to hydrologists. This is the new normal.

The stronger storms and frequent floods are just two examples of the extreme weather events that scientists say climate change will foster. We will see not only more rainfall, but also more droughts and, of course, hotter temperatures worldwide. Last Thursday (July 3), Anchorage, Alaska, hit 90 degrees, its hottest temperature on record. With temperatures above 80 degrees for six days in a row, according to published reports, the city also had its hottest week in the record books.

The heat turned deadly in India, where many poor families don’t enjoy the benefit of air conditioning. Temperatures hovered at 115 degrees for weeks last month, and more than 30 people are believed to have died as a result. Scientists and demographers have long predicted that poorer nations will be harder hit by climate change. Some parts of India, they say, may be rendered uninhabitable. Some island nations, such as the Maldives and the Marshall Islands, may disappear altogether — lost like the mythical land of Atlantis.

But if you belong to the cult of “It’s a Hoax,” there’s nothing to worry about. Keep pretending, and everything will be fine.

Senate Approves Funding Bill To Avert Government Shutdown

Senate Approves Funding Bill To Avert Government Shutdown

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate approved a stop-gap funding bill to avert a looming federal government shutdown on Wednesday, after Republicans and Democrats agreed to help Flint, Michigan, resolve its drinking water crisis.

Lawmakers voted 72-26 to adopt the short-term continuing resolution, or CR, that would keep federal agencies operating from Saturday to Dec. 9. The vote sends the measure on to the House of Representatives, which also was expected to approve it.

Without an extension, many government agencies would run out of money when the federal fiscal year ends at midnight EDT on Friday.

The bill also includes $1.1 billion to combat the Zika virus and $500 million for flood relief in Louisiana and other states.

Democrats in the Senate and House had vowed to oppose the CR until Republicans agreed to an aid package for Flint, a city of more than 100,000 people that has had lead-tainted drinking water for more than two years. Senate Democrats initially rejected the bill in a procedural vote on Tuesday.

A breakthrough came when Republicans pledged to support passage by year’s end of separate legislation helping the city of Flint, Michigan recover from a long-running water crisis that has exposed children and other residents to lead contamination.

Earlier, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi reached the deal late on Tuesday, hours after a piece of legislation known as a continuing resolution (CR) aimed at avoiding the shutdown failed to garner enough votes to advance in the Senate.

Conservative groups urged Congress to defeat the funding bill. But with House and Senate members eager to go home to campaign for re-election, the measure appeared headed toward passage.

Under the deal reached between Ryan and Pelosi, the House will vote on Wednesday on an amendment to a separate water resources bill that would provide a $170 million aid package for Flint. A Senate version of the bill contains $220 million for Flint and other cities with problem water systems.

Once passed by the House, the two chambers would hammer out compromise legislation after the Nov. 8 elections. The Flint money would be contained in that measure.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bernard Orr and Alan Crosby)

iMAGE: The top of the Flint Water Plant tower is seen in Flint, Michigan February 7, 2016.   REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/Files

Louisiana Flooding One More Link To Warming Climate

Louisiana Flooding One More Link To Warming Climate

President Barack Obama’s visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana didn’t assuage those critics who lambasted him for his failure to come earlier, but he didn’t expect it to. As he noted while there, “This is not a photo-op issue. This is how do you make sure that (months) from now, people still are getting the help that they need?”

The president has learned to live with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — as well as the outrageous accusations of his arrow-slinging detractors. It goes with the territory.

Still, it’s no surprise that Republican nominee Donald Trump attempted to gain electoral advantage over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, an Obama ally, by visiting Louisiana before the president did. Trump gained positive press coverage and accolades, not only from his GOP allies, but also from a stalwart Democrat, Louisiana native James Carville.

“Donald Trump came — thank you, Donald Trump. He gave $100,000 to a church in Greenwell Springs. It was very effective,” Carville said in an appearance on Fox News.

But those who are genuinely concerned about the catastrophe in southern Louisiana ought to be grateful to the president for his leadership on at least one issue: climate change. (They should also be grateful for a well-run, high-functioning Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that’s another column.) While the experts rarely link a single event to global warming — and climate scientists have not said that it caused the devastating Louisiana floods — they point to increased rainfall and flooding as a likely result of a warmer climate.

As president, Obama has done more to mitigate climate change than any of his predecessors. Unable to budge a recalcitrant Congress, he nevertheless has managed to push through tightened vehicle emissions standards as well as stricter regulations for coal-fired power plants. He also helped lead the successful effort to secure a global agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump, by contrast, has joined up with the flat-earth Republican chorus that insists climate change is a “hoax.” As the imaginative GOP nominee once tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Tell that to the Californians who are suffering through the fifth year of a severe drought — with not only acute water shortages, but also devastating wildfires. Tell that to the Brazilians and Central Americans who are living through the Zika epidemic, believed to be spread by mosquitoes, which breed more easily in a warming climate. Tell that to the leaders of the Marshall Islands, who worry that their nation may not exist in a few decades because of rising oceans caused by warmer temperatures.

Climatologists say the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998. Last year took the medal for all-time high, but scientists now believe 2016 will best that record.

Warmer temperatures lead not only to more devastating droughts, but also, counter-intuitively, to more rainfall in certain areas. That’s because warmer air is capable of holding more moisture.

By any measure, the rainfall and resulting flooding that struck a wide swath of southern Louisiana earlier this month was historic. The storm occurred over several days and didn’t attract the attention that meteorologists give to major weather events such as Hurricane Katrina.

But experts are calling it the worst natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast in 2012. (The damage from Sandy was also exacerbated by climate change, which created more flooding because of rising oceans.) Neighborhoods believed to be safely outside the floodplain were inundated with water. Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless, and more than a dozen were killed.

And while Louisiana has seen the worst flooding of late, it’s not the only state that has suffered. Five other states — Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia — have all experienced severe flooding in the last 15 months. Those hundred-year events are coming with increasing frequency.

Trump, like his fellow Republicans, will continue to deny that climate change has anything to do with the severe weather events that just keep on coming. His visit to Louisiana, then, is much like the rest of his campaign: an episode from an un-reality show.

(Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: A woman nuzzles her son as they wait to show U.S. President Barack Obama their flood-damaged home as he tours their neighborhood in Zachary, Louisiana, U.S., August 23, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Making Sense Of The Louisiana Flooding: How Bad Is It?

Making Sense Of The Louisiana Flooding: How Bad Is It?

The National Memo published an appeal from meteorologist Eric Holthaus in our morning newsletter today calling upon President Obama to respond more forcefully to the flooding in Louisiana. Holthaus argued that the flooding, the result of an unnamed storm, has received significantly less attention from politicians and the media than a named storm of comparable damage would have.

And he’s right. The Red Cross has already called the flooding the worst natural disaster on American soil since Hurricane Sandy, four years ago. The scope of the flooding is difficult to grasp.

 

6.9 Trillion

gallons of rainfall in one week across Louisiana, per meteorologist Ryan Maue and as reported by CNN. In one parish, Watson, 31 inches of rain fell between 6am and 9pm last Tuesday.

160817093624-louisiana-rainfall-statewide-aug-2016-exlarge-169

CNN

 

60,000-110,000

homes damaged by flooding (this is a range of reported damage and homes within flooded areas). 106,000 households have registered with FEMA to receive aid.

Debris is seen floating in flood water in front of a damaged home in St. Amant, Louisiana, U.S., August 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

 

30,000 residents

rescued from flooded areas.

Jason LeBlanc tries to salvage a flood damaged motor outside of his house in Sorrento, Louisiana, U.S., August 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

 

22

school districts forced to close, some indefinitely. The Washington Post reports as many as 4,000 teachers have been displaced by flooding.

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

 

20

parishes have been declared disaster areas by FEMA. And Gov. John Bell Edwards expects 10 more parishes to be declared disasters areas soon, out of a total of 64 in the state.

Wikimedia Commons/Williamcasey

Wikimedia Commons/Williamcasey

 

13

deaths across the state.

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

Top Photo: A man throws flood damaged material into a pile of debris in St. Amant, Louisiana, U.S., August 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman