And meanwhile the executive branch is too busy with scandals to pay attention to running the government. We will be really lucky if this is the only major hurricane in the US this season
I’m in Myrtle Beach, which is Horry County, South Carolina. I’m lucky in that my house is located on high ground and haven’t had any problems. The rains have stopped, but we’re downstream of the watershed in NC and SC. So when that flooding dissipates, the water will be coming down to Charleston, Georgetown and Horry County, where I am.
Meanwhile, another storm system is predicted to come in Tuesday evening.
The entire school district will be closed for the upcoming week, making three weeks straight. Here’s a pic of a friend’s house and what it’s like in Conway.
We had historic flooding in 2015, then Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Both were considered 500 year or 1,000 year events. This is much worse.
The basic climate change equation for big storms is as straightforward as it gets: Warmer tropical seas → warmer and wetter air above them → conversion of extra heat energy into rotational energy (cyclone dynamics) → bigger and wetter hurricanes.
Hurricanes like Sandy, Harvey, Irma, and Florence will become more common; they will also intrude further north. That is a prediction that will hold up all too well I’m afraid: 100-year storms yearly, 500 or 1,000-year storms every decade including New England.
NB: While sea-rise and damaging storms will be more spectacular they won’t be the worst humanitarian catastrophes by far IMHO: that I believe will involve increasing agricultural failures.
The modern Republican Party and its “President”, Donald Trump, have been violently anti-science and have claimed that human-caused climate change is a “hoax”, possibly created by the Chinese. This was demonstrated in spades by the Republican North Carolina State Legislature who in 2012 actually passed HB 819, a bill, which legislates state and local agencies that develop coastal policies to ignore scientific models showing an acceleration in the rise of sea levels. The driving force for this, other than the vast stupidity of the Republican Party itself was by NC-20, an nonprofit governmental group stacked with coastal development and real estate interests, and the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which have ties to the fossil fuel industry. Other idiot - full groups pushing for this legislation include the Friends of Forestry Political Action Committee, the Heartland Institute, an ultraconservative “think tank”, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch Industries, who gave money to several North Carolina legislators.
It reminds me of the famous order by King Canute of Denmark that the tides should stop. I wish I could ask these legislators now how it is going with Hurricane Florence and the flooding of the cities.
I have read (don’t know if it’s true) that Canute was actually rebuking his advisors, who were pushing him to issue various edicts to do things they wanted. By making it clear that there were limits to the king’s power, he was (according to this version) essentially telling them to back off and stop trying to get him to write checks his nobles wouldn’t cash.
If that version is true, it’s certainly not a history the GOP has learned from.
Paulw
You are entirely correct and I plead historical ignorance for the sake of a good story. I heard yesterday a discussion of how the values of beachfront properties in the Carolinas have already started to plummet. Of course this problem is not limited to the Carolinas but to every city in this country near the ocean (and rivers!). The military seem to be the only people that appreciate this coming problem and have generated plans to start moving their facilities inland. Perhaps when Mar-a- Lago is submerged our idiot in chief will start to realize the gravity of this situation.
PS Thanks for correcting me.
The other version has become thoroughly embedded in all of our common stories. And heck, we don’t know if either version actually happened…
But we know what’s happening here. And insurance companies also have a pretty good idea about what’s going to happen with climate change. But lots of flood insurance is federally funded, so companies aren’t on the hook…