Extreme Weather is Here

Has Mother Nature gotten your attention yet?

This summer, Phoenix Arizona recorded over 100 days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Scientific American reports that over the last two summers, worldwide temperatures were the highest ever recorded in two thousand years. (They can determine this from examining tree rings, somehow.) The average temperature for this year was 62.2 Fahrenheit or 16.8 Celsius, which exceeded the high set in 2023 by a small one-tenth. Fifteen countries across the world recorded their highest-ever temperatures. Western Australia and Antarctica also set records for heat.

The article further notes:

“Though global and national temperature records offer clear signs of how much excess heat greenhouse, gases have trapped in the atmosphere, real people do not live in average temperatures. Such measurements can mask wide regional variations and extremes. In the US Southwest, successive summer heat domes created one of the hottest places on the planet: 

The planet will continue to blast through heat records until humans stop producing greenhouse gases, says Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. With renewable energy now cheaper than fossil fuels, the largest hurdle to meaningful action is not technological but political, he says. This means “the solution is in our grasp,” Dessler emphasizes. Greenhouse gas emissions have held steady over the past decade, at least preventing further acceleration of warming.”

The Paris Accords, in 2016, made it a goal to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world is knocking at that door now and many expect that level to be exceeded in the next decade unless more countries move away from reliance on fossil fuels. Changes will not be abrupt but will come in spurts as the oceans, where much weather develops, react to the warmer temperatures. Extreme weather events such as those spurred on by El Nino years in the Western Hemisphere will become more prominent and severe.

According to the National Weather Service, “El Nino can affect our weather significantly. The warmer waters cause the Pacific jet stream to move south of its neutral position. With this shift, areas in the northern US and Canada are dryer and warmer than usual. But in the US Gulf Coast and the Southeast, these periods are wetter than usual and have increased flooding.”

La Nina years act as a contrast to El Nino years, as they shift the jet stream northward, resulting in warmer weather for the southern regions and cooler and wetter conditions for the northern areas. La Nina can lead to years with more severe hurricanes. These systems occur irregularly and can last from one year to several years. Whatever block they are in, the US will feel the effects of these phenomena. El Nino ended last Spring, so we are now in a La Nina year.

On September 19, 2024, the Washington Post reported in an article titled:

How rising global heat connects catastrophic floods on four continents

Within weeks, catastrophic floods swept across four continents.

 

Typhoons triggered landslides across Southeast Asia and inundated Shanghai. A slow-moving storm, unusual for this time of year, sent a deluge over Central Europe. Months of floods wore on in northern and central Africa as rain continued to fall on landscapes that are normally more arid. And in the United States, a tropical system too disorganized to become a named storm nonetheless poured historic rainfall on the Carolinas, with more than 20 inches landing in some spots.

 

In Asia, Typhoon Yagi became the year’s most intense super typhoon before making landfall in China on Sept. 6 and northern Vietnam on Sept. 7 and bringing torrential rains into Laos and Myanmar, where it converged with monsoon rains to trigger landslides that buried entire villages. The storm killed dozens in the Philippines and Thailand, and nearly 300 people each in Vietnam and Myanmar.

 

In Europe, a similar contrast was fueling rain that has lingered over the continent for nearly a week. After Arctic air plunged southward to meet Mediterranean warmth, catastrophic floods, and heavy snow inundated parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. At least 19 people died and thousands were forced to vacate their homes in Central and Eastern Europe.

 Each of these pieces preceded the arrival of Hurricane Helene last week.

Devastating rainfalls preceded and followed Helene’s path northward over the already saturated ground. Helene came ashore as a Category 4/5 storm with winds over 140 miles per hour and a six-to-eight-foot storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Barrier islands and coastal communities, far from the eye, were in many cases obliterated. As the storm left Florida it was downgraded to a tropical depression. However, that did not prevent it from dropping 12 inches of rain over a few days in Atlanta, Georgia, and nearly twice as much over eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. This storm traveled north as far as southern Ohio, creating unprecedented destruction with severe flooding in its wake. The speed of this storm, with its accompanying winds and torrential downpours, broke many existing weather records. The famous Masters Golf Course in Augusta suffered major storm damage. Many roads in western South Carolina became impassable because of water and tree damage.

In Tennessee and North Carolina, Interstates I-40 and I-26 had portions ripped out by cascading waters. The towns of Chimney Rock, Black Mountain and Boone came close to obliteration. In Asheville, a city of 95,000 residents, the Swannanoa, and French Broad Rivers overflowed into many areas along their banks, inundating areas such as Biltmore Village and the Riverside arts districts. The water plant, overtopped by flooding, could not function, which resulted in Warren Wilson College, located outside the city, being isolated and losing access to clean water. At one point during the height of the storm, more than 2.5 million people in the south were without power and/or cell service.

Video of destruction in Asheville can be found here and here.

In Tennessee, patients had to be rescued from the roof of a hospital as flooding waters entered its lower levels. Nearby dams such as the Waterville Dam and the Nolichucky Dam threatened to overflow, but survived the onslaught.

 As of Sunday evening, the death toll from this storm stands at 89, but as waters recede, death totals are expected to climb.

President Biden issued emergency declarations for the affected areas and FEMA is already providing services to the places they can reach. FEMA, and the the power company for much of the area, Duke Energy, pre-positioned supplies and work crews in the Florida panhandle, but not further north as they did not expect the furious strength of Helene to expand that far.

Property damage from this one storm is expected to reach as high as 26 Billion, while the estimated economic damage over months can be calculated by losses in the tourism business, integral for much of the area, the costs for resettling the large numbers of residents, and reorganizing commercial and governmental services. Some put those totals over time to exceed 100 Billion dollars. Some Gulf Coast residents, having experienced three major storms in recent years, can no longer buy or afford insurance, which makes mortgages increasingly more difficult to obtain. Resilience is endemic in coastal communities, but families can only take so much. In coastal North Carolina, along the Outer Banks, the town of Rodanthe has seen seven houses reclaimed by sea waters in the last four years.

So how long should the Federal government rebuild such communities that are subject to periodic disasters? In North Carolina, the Park Service is buying up some coastal homes in areas of severe erosion, but it does not have funds to continue forever. I favor restricting all building in areas close to the sea, as sea level rise will not reverse. Some communities require homes to be built on stilts, but, as we have seen, waters can undermine those supports.

So, is this storm a wake-up call? I hope so. How can we, as regular folks, contribute to the slowing of Global Climate Change? Well, not all of us can afford to trade in for an electronic car, or even a hybrid one. But maybe we could make fewer trips and combine our errands into one outing. If we cannot place solar panels on our apartments, maybe we could work to conserve energy in our homes. We could grow produce or buy from local providers and farmers markets. If offered in our area, we could compost food waste for local repurposing. Small steps add up. Remember the mantra: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just thought you should also look at these “reforms” proposed in :

Mandate for Change (the 2025 Project) on page 378. I noted just a few of those reforms. The Heritage Foundation, many Republicans, and previous staffers from the DJT White House worked on this document and some are now working on his campaign. He cannot disown it no matter how much he tries to backtrack. He would dismantle many of our recent reforms.

“End the focus on climate change and green subsidies.)

Mission/Overview The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy traces its roots to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975,42 but most of its programs today are rooted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.43 Under the Biden Administration, EERE’s mission is “to accelerate the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of technologies and solutions to equitably transition America to net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050” and “ensure [that] the clean energy economy benefits all Americans.”44 The office is made up of three “pillars”: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable transportation.

Under the Biden Administration, EERE is a conduit for taxpayer dollars to fund progressive policies, including decarbonization of the economy and renewable resources. EERE has focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the exclusion of other statutorily defined requirements such as energy security and cost. For example, EERE’s five programmatic priorities during the Biden Administration are all focused on decarbonization of the electricity sector, the industrial sector, transportation, buildings, and the agricultural sector.45 l Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances. Pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 as amended, the agency is required to set and periodically tighten energy and/or water efficiency standards for nearly all kinds of commercial and household appliances, including air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, stoves, clothes washers and dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, light bulbs, and showerheads. Current law and regulations reduce consumer choice, drive up costs for consumer appliances, and emphasize energy efficiency to the exclusion of other important factors, such as cycle time and repairability.

Budget EERE was funded at slightly more than $2.8 billion in FY 2021, and DOE requested slightly more than $4.0 billion for FY 2023.47 Congress needs to rescind the appropriated monies that EERE has not spent and begin fresh with new appropriations..”

We have an election on November 5^th. Please vote early if you can; this date is only 37 days away. Get your friends to vote. If our world, clean air, clean water, food access, and safe global temperatures are important to you, speak up and act. Involve others. Make a plan to vote and bring friends.

Before I close, I must say words of condolence to those who have lost their homes, their livelihood, or loved ones in this storm. I hope this trauma will soon ease.

Til next week – Peace.