Kerry Emanuel, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist who has for decades studied the relationship of climate change to hurricanes and other severe weather, posted this reaction:
Nice piece…well balanced and makes the essential point that it will not pay to blame everything that goes wrong on climate change. Still, the outbreak was extraordinary, meteorologically, with 362 tornadoes versus the 148 of the previous record holder, the April 3-4, 1974, outbreak.We have no idea whether this was a once in 100-year or once in 1,000-year event or whether climate change may have played a role. But it is clear that policies toward construction insurance, and federal disaster relief play the dominant role in setting up the U.S. for a string of natural disasters stretching as far as one can see into the future, with or without climate change.At the same time, the scientific issue of how climate change might affect the incidence of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes should form an important avenue of research. In my view, this problem is ripe for a more concerted research effort.
Gavin Schmidt of NASA and the Realclimate blog, sent these thoughts before yesterday’s post (I missed them in an e-mail rush):
There is a little bit of a subtlety on exposure issues that is frequently glossed over. For instance, total cost (i.e., for insurance purposes) is the total of aggregate damage – and this undoubtedly increases with the amount of development (i.e., ‘the more stuff in the way’ argument).However insurance *premiums* on existing infrastructure should only change as a function of the perceived risk (which is independent of other development – except in the case that other infrastructure is going to damage you directly – perhaps via dam break or similar).Since premiums need to be set fairly, there is a need to assess climate change related changes in risk regardless of whether that will be a small factor in overall costs.For instance, if hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, the premium for an existing home should change by the difference in likely damages associated with higher winds.The increases in *total* costs should be covered by having more people paying insurance premiums, but at the existing individual level, that is irrelevant.Lives of course can be saved by having stronger infrastructure, better warnings, and more emergency shelters (one for every trailer park?). But that is not free, nor does it reduce non-human costs.Perhaps more related to your upcoming post, the close emotional connection between weather and climate means that climate scientists are *always* being asked what connection there is between extreme weather and climate. This will also often be the only exposure the TV news gives any climate scientists at all. This is not going to change.
Considering this season’s extraordinary flooding in the Mississippi River basin and the losses from this spring’s tornado outbreaks, Kevin M. Simmons, the economist at Austin College studying tornado deaths, sent this reflection:
Perhaps Katrina, last week’s tornadoes and current flooding may ignite a conversation about how we live with our environment. I did a project on storm mitigation on Galveston island years ago, and in visiting Galveston I was struck by developers literally dumping sand into the bay to create more “seaside” lots to sell. The truth is we are just not smart enough to contain the environment to our demands. At some point we have to respect the limitations and live within them. Dennis Mileti wrote a book called “Disasters by Design.” His basic point is that when we build homes, business, etc., in known hazardous places, bad things are eventually going to happen.
Here’s more on the midwestern flooding, which is threatening to match or exceed the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. I sent some questions to Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University, who’s done important studies of the human habit of rebuilding in flood zones in the Midwest. Here’s the exchange, with a bit of e-mail shorthand cleaned up:
Q.
Given the human habit of building in harm’s way, particularly along the great waterways of the heartland, what’s your sense of the mix of factors leading to the extent of what’s coming this spring (…engineering in favor of agriculture, spread of impervious surfaces, climate change, climate variability…)?
A.
The Birds Point-New Madrid floodway is a microcosm of the paradoxes and contradictions of U.S. flood-control strategy. People living and working on floodway land designed and designated as an overflow channel of the river — and for which, U.S. taxpayers paid flow easements — these people fight against using the floodway for its intended purpose.
American property-owners refuse to accept that Nature may place any inherent limits on how we may profit from any acre of land anywhere. In 1981, Liz Anderson, a Missouri local, wrote that “over one billion dollars worth of industry wanted to build in the floodplain area” (Morgan, 1999).
Floods are inevitable and even beneficial functions of rivers except where humans and human infrastructure impose themselves upon the natural domain of flooding, which is the floodplain.
Q.
What are the biggest differences between the situations the last time this levee was opened and now?
A.
The Corps last blew the Birds Point levee in 1937. Politically, little has changed since then — floodway residents, farmers, and Missouri politicians have fought the Corps during each large flood, and successfully blocked several attempts to open the floodway.
What has changed — like U.S. floodplains as a whole — is that at-risk population and infrastructure defied good sense, planning, and increased in these areas. Political pressure is never-ending — “In June 1982, Assistant Secretary of the Army William Gianelli toured the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway by helicopter and instructed the Memphis District to allow development that was compatible with flood control” (Morgan, 1999). During the last decade floodplain residents and Missouri politicians lobbied for internal levees within the floodway — flood protection WITHIN a designated floodway,
Q.
Is there any way to smartly UNbuild the human presence in areas where assets superimpose with nature’s need for elbow room?
A.
Facing increasing flooding from increasing development, climate change, etc., several European countries have adopted an official policy of “Room for the Rivers” — retreating from their floodplains rather than continuing to develop upon them.
Q.
Is there any way for the answer to the previous question to happen in the real world?
A.
Our research group and our partners are currently implementing a strategy to restart a process of wholesale relocation of willing communities off floodplains. The last such large-scale and wholesale relocation was Valmeyer, Ill., in the wake of the 1993 flood, with nothing in the past 18 years. The mayor of Valmeyer and prime motivator of its move was Dennis Knobloch, a partner in our initiative.
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