The Master of Weasel Words Wants "Reflections"

Right out of the gate, Justin Trudeau is balking at serious action on climate change.

Speaking on Sunday night, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, suggested that using federal money to help relocate communities affected by flooding was a possibility. “Once we secure the situation through this spring flooding season, we will have to have significant reflections and conversations on how we move forward,” he said, according to the Canadian Press.

Jesus, that's the same crap we heard after the last devastating Calgary floods in 2013, the area's second "once in a century" flood in eight years. First there was the "no one could have known" dollop of horse shit, quickly followed by the "we're going to get on top of this just as soon as we get this mess sorted out."

Politicians are liars and that includes the current boss. The more pressure they face the harder they lie. They also know how to use their "get out of jail free" card. It's called "creeping normalcy." Give the people a little time and they'll simply accept their "new normal" and complacently go about their business. It's what we do. It's part of human nature. It lets them sell us down the river.

Alberta's Tory government, as we now know, commissioned a flood mitigation study in 2006, right after the First Great Flood, and then sat on it until last year, just in time for the Second Great Flood. The report identified flood plain risks and recommended a ban on development there. "What? No development? Are you out of your frackin' mind? This is ALBERTA for f--k sakes. Ditch that report." 

Well that 2006 study is probably useless now anyway. It was based on the 2005 flooding, back when they thought that really was a once-a-century event. By some estimates the 2013 floods could be three times worse and so "flood plain" has taken on a much larger dimension. And that once-a-century business is now pretty much debunked. 

Will the Alberta government do a new flood mitigation study? That would involve thinking the unthinkable, the great conundrum that climate change forces on us. How do we persuade people to prepare for things far outside of our experience? Today's political classes don't work that way. They don't have the political vision or the moral courage.

You see the soggy people of Alberta never menaced the Tories. They never threatened the conservatives' hold on power. They signaled they would settle for whatever they were given and, when the cost of remedial measures was figured out, they weren't going to be getting much.

Trudeau is going to emulate the Tories in Alberta. Why? Because this grave threat is way above his pay grade. He's not smart enough. He's not courageous enough. His credibility is in tatters. He's not even popular enough to implement what, to many, would be unpopular measures. No, it'll be "significant reflections and conversations" from this prime minister, words and hollow words at that, not deeds.

Sorry, Canada, but until you're ready to put the fear of God into these political hustlers you're on your own.

And They're Calling It "Medicane"

Climate change has brought a new severe weather event to the Mediterranean. It's being called the "medicane." Put simply it's a hurricane, akin to what is routinely experienced in the Caribbean, only it develops in the warming water conditions of the Mediterranean.


You can blame a ‘medicane’ for this week’s deadly flooding in Greece.

Nope, a “medicane” is not a new type of health insurance. It’s a Mediterranean hurricane — such as the one currently developing in the Mediterranean Sea, where warming waters have produced a weather system with the characteristics of a subtropical cyclone.

Flash floods linked to moisture from the storm hit parts of Greece on Wednesday, killing 16 people and injuring dozens more. The storm is projected to skirt Sicily and head toward Greece this weekend, potentially inflicting more damage.

Medicanes are so uncommon that scientists have yet to establish a clear set of criteria for them. Weather systems like these are more typically found in the Caribbean, where warmer water temperatures feed tropical storms.

A Mediterranean cyclone generally counts as a medicane if it forms the characteristic hurricane-like “eye,” according to Emmanouil Flaounas, a meteorologist at the National Observatory of Athens who conducts research on medicanes through a European Commission-funded project.

There are plenty of new terms being coined thanks to climate change. "Flash drought" is one, "atmospheric river" is another. Now "medicane." Eventually somebody will have to publish a directory of the next lexicon. I suppose "we're so screwed" probably doesn't fit the bill.

Turns out there are sites where you can brush up on climate change lingo.  Then again, don't. When you see how extensive the word lists are you'll be thoroughly demoralized.

When the Skies Open

Living in the rainiest part of Canada, the legendary "wet coast," one tends to understand rain as others sometimes might not.

Out here we are steeped in the high winds and heavy rains that blow in from the Pacific. But the situation has been changing in recent years. The rains have been getting heavier, the winds seemingly stronger. Rains that wake you up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep. Happens a lot lately. Winds so strong and turbulent that the rainfall switches direction before your eyes and sometimes seems almost horizontal.

A few years ago we received this Biblical deluge. It started as abruptly as it finished, no more than 18-minutes, like a tap turning on and off. No rain, rain, no rain. Yet, in that brief interval, we received so much rain that it produced this:



Here's the thing. This is early onset stuff. We're just getting started.

When the skies open up and deluge an area, the results can be catastrophic, with roads washed out and homes destroyed by the resulting flash floods. Such extreme downpours are already occurring more often across the US, but a new study finds that as global temperatures rise, storms could dump considerably more rain and skyrocket in frequency.

The study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that storms that now occur about once a season could happen five times a season by the century’s end, a 400% increase.

And when such storms do occur, they could produce up to 70% more rain. That means that an intense thunderstorm that would today drop about 5cm (2 inches) of rain would drop 9cm in the future.

How much worse will it get? That depends on a number of factors from how quickly we can decarbonize our societies and our economies to how well we manage upgrading and replacing essential infrastructure such as storm sewers and floodways. So far neither the United States nor Canada has got an effective, coherent plan to deal with this threat to our homes, our communications, and our agriculture.

We Need To Do What These Guys Are Doing

"These guys" are the Brits.  What they're doing is taking an inventory of their transportation infrastructure to assess its vulnerability to severe storm events caused by 'early onset' climate change.  The good news is that the Brits get it. They know climate change is real and that they're going to have to adapt or else.  In other words, the Brits have concluded that infrastructure designed for Halocene conditions just can't cut it in the Anthropocene.

Britain's crumbling rail network is not built to "modern standards" and is at risk of a repeat of the severe disruption of last winter unless urgent action is taken, according to a major new report being considered by ministers.

A review of the transport network's resilience was commissioned in the wake of the storms and floods of last winter. Cornwall and much of Devon were cut off and rail services west of Exeter suspended for two months after storms washed away the main line at Dawlish.

The report warns that it is a case of when, not if, disruption happens again. The severe winter of last year will be a regular fixture, it says.

But that sort of thing could never happen here, right?  Right?  Wrong.  This happened in Calgary last summer.

Over the summer we've witnessed how climate change impacts are overwhelming infrastructure across North America.  For example, storm sewer systems we designed and built to handle 19th and 20th century conditions can't handle the heavy downpours we get today and, for some, it's getting very, very expensive.

Jeff and Joanna Stefanek are homeowners in the Chicago suburb of Burbank. They know a thing or two about flash floods.  You might even say that, by now, they're pros.  They knew what to do when floodwater began pouring into their home Friday morning.

The Stefaneks got hit hard, but they were not alone.

Not that that was any solace. They dashed around the house, moving high-priced electronics such as a sound system and TV to higher ground atop sofas and tables. Jeff tried to save improvements such as new doors and woodwork he has installed since the last bout of flooding.

He was unable to “and now we have about $15,000 in damage,” he said.

“It flooded in 2010 and we gutted the house. It flooded again in 2013. It was like taking five steps back. And this is the second time it flooded this year,” he said.

The regional authority in Cook County is working on a flood relief plan that's due in five years.  Five years.  I expect the Stefaneks will be long gone by then.  The US National Weather Service has just issued another flash flooding advisory for their region.

Today in Flash Flooding News

We've always lived with spring flooding caused by rapid melting of winter snowpack.  People along the Red River know full well how that works.

Today, however, flooding isn't just a seasonal event and it doesn't always have to do with winter snows.  Now we get flash floods where storm clouds appear overhead and unload five or six inches of rain on one spot in a matter of hours, overwhelming storm sewers and playing hell with low-lying areas.

The Americans have been whipsawed by flash flooding over the past two months from San Bernardino, California to Long Island, New York.  Detroit, Baltimore and Washington, DC, have been hammered.

Yesterday, a Kentucky town with the quaint name of Skullbone, got a 5-inch drenching.  A chunk of north central Texas saw flash flooding as predicted by the NOAA.  Arkansas got it too.

Kentucky and Tennessee remain under flood warnings for today.  Meanwhile a new front is moving in from the mid-west which threatens to bring more "disruptive downpours" to the northeast, including much of southern Ontario.

The worst part of this is that there's almost nothing people can do about it.  People can sort through their basements, get valuables up off the floor or to safety upstairs.  They can make sure the sump pump is working and that their gumboots are handy.  They can urge their governments to upgrade infrastructure to handle heavy, concentrated deluges but that's going to take time - and money that's in scarce supply in these anti-tax days.

Greetings from Global Warming. Now Pay Up or Else.

It doesn't matter how certain they are that climate change is a hoax.  They're still going to have to pay up.   The U.S. federal flood insurance programme (private sector insurers said 'adios' long ago) is bringing home the reality of climate change in the form of massive premium increases for homeowners in coastal or flood prone areas.  From Reuters:

Carol Giovannoni, 51, of St. Pete Beach, a barrier island community off Florida's west coast, is one of the people dreading October 1, when the law takes effect. Giovannoni said the annual flood insurance premium on her standard 1950s concrete-block, ranch-style home on the waterfront will jump from $1,700 to $15,000 over the next few years. She said her home has never flooded in 59 years.

Were Giovannoni to sell her home, or let her policy lapse, the new rate would apply immediately, she said, but exactly how rates will be calculated under the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of July 2012 is unclear to many.

Congress passed the law, as it turned out just months before Superstorm Sandy struck the northeastern coast in late October, in an effort to balance a $24 billion deficit in the National Flood Insurance Program, which had growing losses from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and earlier disasters.

"Once these rates go into effect, the value of our house is probably cut in half. We will have a tough time selling," said Giovannoni, who is a realtor, noting that flood insurance is required by mortgage lenders.

Canada will probably have to do something along the same lines for properties built in flood zones.   At the moment we still treat these as "once in a century" events that qualify for federal disaster relief but when megafloods sweep neighbourhoods once a decade we can't keep bailing them out.   Besides, Albertans hate socialism.


Between recurrent megafloods inland and the combined impact of sea level rise and severe storm events of increasing frequency and intensity there are places for which the only solution is retreat.


Vancouver and the Lower Mainland face serious challenges.  Seawalls and dikes can hold back some impacts of sea level rise but probably not major storm surge on high tides.   And the mighty Fraser River, that created the Lower Mainland estuary in the first place, does have to empty into the sea.   Sea level rise will increase the already difficult problem of Fraser River flooding.

It would be great if Stephen Harper's gang would start dealing with these issues but that might screw up his narrative on flogging filthy fossil fuels.   For Harper, climate change is that weird cousin we keep in the attic.

Update.

Alberta municipal affairs minister, Doug Griffiths, has announced a one-day, open symposium in October to toss around ideas about flood mitigation.

Griffiths says enough studies have been done and now it is time to take action.

“It’s time to put some of that into action, engineer the results so that people can see the tension dams going into place, the diversions, whatever it is that’s going to secure their community, somewhat against flood going forward. Like I said, you can’t flood proof but you can sure do a lot to mitigate the risk,” said Griffiths.

 

The minister said he's looking for a $2 to 2.5-billion bailout from Ottawa to cover this year's flood losses.  He seems pretty sure he's going to get it.  Where is Stephen Harper's riding anyway?

When "Biblical" Becomes Normal

The word being bandied about now to describe Colorado's raging flash floods is "Biblical".  That's a step up from "once a century"
but some are saying "new normal" might be more accurate.

Andrew Freedman at Climate Central ...notes that this lethal catastrophic event is consistent with the increasing frequency of extreme rain storms occurring under, and sometimes definitely linked to, continued climate change.

Climate Central/National Climate Assessment

Biblical?  Hardly.  Normal?  Yeah, that's right - or at least that's right now.  If we start passing these events off as supernatural, divinely pre-ordained, some will argue that takes us off the hook for the conditions we, not some deity, have created.

Vancouver Region Bracing for Storm Surge, King Tides and Flooding.

The next couple of days pose a serious flooding threat to the Lower Mainland, particularly Vancouver's low-lying suburbs.

Sunday and Monday are expected to see the strongest of the seasonal "king tides", with levels over 5 metres above low tide.
But Oceanographer Scott Tinis says a storm surge will bring that several feet higher.
"Places such as Boundary Bay are particularly susceptible to not only the raising sea levels but the wind waves. So low-lying areas, especially near river deltas , may see some localized flooding."
Tinis says the last time we saw ocean levels this high was during the 1982 El Nino storm season.
That storm surge is also expected to bring some flooding to areas of Delta.
Emergency centre director George Harvie says crews will be busy before the extremely high tide hits at around 9 Monday morning.

Update:  At first it seemed like a false alarm but now that seems to have been wishful thinking.  Municipal crews are said to be sandbagging furiously and the surge is expected on this evening's high tide.