Our World and Everything in It

While I was on the NASA website I couldn’t help but click on ” Forests Damaged by Hurricane Katrina Become Major Carbon Source.” That article stated that, “a research team has estimated that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests, which weakened the role the forests play in storing carbon from the atmosphere. The damage has led to these forests releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” The satellite pics in the article show the devastation from Katrina. It was quite a wipe out.

The NASA article also stated that “[t]he carbon cycle is intimately linked to just about everything we do, from energy use to food and timber production and consumption. [] As more and more carbon is released to the atmosphere by human activities, the climate warms, triggering an intensification of the global water cycle that produces more powerful storms, leading to destruction of more trees, which then act to amplify climate warming.”

So one event, like a massive hurricane, results in deforestation and decay that cause more CO2 to be released, and more overall warming for more massive hurricanes. Destructive cycle seemed to be formed rather easily. Not good for us.

Read more and check out the web short “In Katrina’s Wake” @ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2007/katrina_carbon.html.

The Northwest is getting beat up by the weather again this winter season. I started to write a blog on Dec. 22 last year about El Nino, but didn’t actually publish it until April. It talked about El Nino but did not mention that when El Nino leaves La Nina arrives and that is what beats up the northwest. The east coast got beat up by a noreaster in the spring, and this summer the southeast dried up. We’re in for more of the same with the arrival of La Nina.
 
This is all confusing to me also. But some of the predicted hurricanes didn’t appear in 2006 and 2007 because of El Nino’s sudden reappearance. La Nina usually follows El Nino where cooler water surface temperatures kick up hurricanes to the gulf, and where La Nina may last up to 3 years. It looks like global warming is certainly causing a rise in more El Ninos. We’ve not had any big hurricanes because of El Nino’s reappearance.  

Predictions that are made within proper predictions for both El Nino and La Nina are still true to form. But global warming is having an impact on the occurrence of both. I read my blog that related the predictions of the scorching dryness in the southeast we had this summer. La Nina brings about drenching rain and floods and wind in the northeast, while the southeast dries up. The northeast gets really lousy spring weather. Last year New York flooded with high winds.

Still confused? I listed a couple of good websites with good explanations about El and La, LOL, and my blog from last year. And confused or not, our fellow Americans in Washington and Oregon are going through hell from weather we’re finding quite comfortable. Five people have died, and the National Guard and Coastguard have rescued over 160. Those states suffered 100 mph winds, torrential rain (compliments of La Nina), mudslides and flooding. People evacuated to hotels and then got stranded in those hotels. A four-lane highway in Washington, I-5, is under 10 feet of water in places. There is a 20-mile closure and detours across half the state. 

The good news is all the rivers have peaked, and the rain has stopped as the system moves on to the Midwest where it’s turned to snow. N. Dakota may get 9 inches. That’s a pretty strong system that just holds on, keeps moving and changing.   

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc99/10_30_99/fob5.htm

http://www.globalcomsatphone.com/articles/el_nino.html

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=53

First it was 8 states have huge fires, now it’s 9 states have huge floods. I hope there aren’t too many people left out there that still think this is a fluke instead of the effects of global warming.

There are people suffering all over the country from the effects of horrible weather. CNN showed one homeowner in Minnesota whose nice house was swept 150 ft off its foundation. They lost everything and do not know if their insurance will cover anything because their policy didn’t cover mudslides. A shot of Main St. in New Hartford, Iowa showed it’s under water and unusable and the skies were clouding up again. 

I have to have flood insurance because I have a lien on my house for other property I bought. My house is on a canal off of the Huron River. Insurance is not cheap and I can only get it through FEMA. I can prove that in 1973, when Lake Erie flooded badly, water never entered my home because it is 4 blocks high. Since that time, dikes have been placed along all the banks and a large drainage system created by the Army of Engineers along S. Huron River Dr. has been in place. Since we just got a new road last year, the dike along the road was refurbished. It has never flooded along here since 1973. Our canal would have to rise at least 9 feet to clear the dike and flood over and then rise 3 ft. higher to get into my house. But I still have to have flood insurance. And it’s FEMA flood insurance. Many of us don’t put a lot of faith into that agency.

There are limits to flood insurance also. There is a $250,000 limit for structure. Don’t think you will just scrap the old and build new. Flood insurance only replaces things in the house based on depreciated cost. This means if you have 20 year old cupboards in your kitchen, then you’re only getting what those cupboards cost, not what new ones will cost. So people are not rubbing their palms together. They are more likely to clasp them together in prayer that flood insurance pays for something, anything. The outlook for that is not good. The number one thing to get the ball rolling is that the area has to be declared a disaster from floods. Remember Katrina?

There is a way out of flood insurance. You must get an Elevation Certificate from a reputable surveying company. Standard costs are $500 to $700. Don’t let a company rip you off for $1000 or more. Once you have that cert, contact your mortgage lender for the paperwork or address and number to get the paperwork to fill out and submit to FEMA. FEMA expects to see that Elevation Cert. and you are expected to document why you feel you shouldn’t have to have flood insurance. Don’t be fooled by the area you live in either. I have friends that live in Detroit Beach, two roads in from the boat club that have never paid flood insurance because they sit higher than the rest of the neighborhood. You certainly cannot see that elevation. And I am positive in 1973, water just raced through there since it came across Dixie Hwy. at least 6-8 roads inland from the back of the beach area where they live.

I’m going to give it a try. My cousin lived on a canal on the south end of Grosse Ile. That’s the end that floods if and when it does flood. He had a sunken living room! I could see his boat in the canal from that living room only about 150 ft. away. But the little hill, I’d call it a mogul, that his house sat on was high enough to get him out of flood insurance. Flood insurance is a good thing if and when you need it, but for many it is just a rip-off. It’s worth a try and cost of the cert. if you have a good argument against it.  The cost of the Elevation Cert. for me is less than my annual flood insurance rate. And I think I have a good argument. When I stand on my dock and see the water needs to rise at least 9 ft., and my house was through the last flood untouched, I think I have a chance.

NASA had to shelve a $200 million dollar satellite mission headed by a MIT professor because of budget cuts by the Bush administration. They also had to cancel the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project that measures global precipitation, and the launch of a new satellite to replace one of our aged, primary weather satellites. All would help scientists better understand the impact of global warming.

What does that mean for us? With the weather growing more erratic, we won’t know sooner, but possibly later, maybe too late, what lies in store for us as far as droughts, floods, and hurricanes. It also affects the accuracy of severe weather forecasts and scientist’s ability to improve climate models with greater precision so that we know what’s going to happen far enough ahead of time to save our lives.

 And where are the funds going instead? Well, president Bush has a goal to complete the International Space Station and get astronauts back on the moon by 2020. Is it just me, or is he out of sync with everything just a tad on purpose? After all, it is a fact that the present administration is anything but environmentally friendly since it has a vested interest in big oil. It’s just a little too coincidental that funding to NASA has been cut, and it’s goals redirected by the president, especially when NASA scientists were the ones to come forward in protest that their expertise and predictions about global warming were censored by this administration. Evidence about those alterations aired on BBC news.

 Many cuts are being made by this administration as we run into the red more and more because of a war no one seems to want any longer. While Bush signs a $100 billion Iraq war funding bill, most of us should be wondering and inquiring how we’re paying for it. So far I’ve found federal funding to communities to repair/replace aging water lines has been cut, NASA’s funding has been cut, $78 million has been cut for federal energy efficiency programs, $2 million has been cut from FEMA’s budget, and Bush/Cheney have attempted another backdoor entry into the Artic Refuge for oil drilling, while they continue to propose to auction land in our National Parks to the highest bidder. And finally, please contact our representatives about the Farm Bill. Cuts have been made to almost two-thirds of the $23 million designated for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs that was allotted in the 2002 Farm Bill.

I’m warning everyone about the Farm Bill putting a pinch on farmers right at a time when we need to support farms in America if we want to eat untainted food again. As the Union for Concerned Scientists stated recently about the Farm Bill “These people rely upon grant and loan programs to support energy efficiency improvements and the purchase of renewable energy systems including wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy sources. At a time when America’s rural communities are facing economic challenges, funding renewable energy and energy efficiency projects would help establish an additional income source for landowners, create jobs, and lower energy costs for rural consumers. The Bush administration also attempted to slash this program in the 2005 and 2006 budget proposals.” Nice, real nice.

 Some might argue that Bush has raised federal funding for solar power to $148 million and doubled biomass research to $150 million. But it’s curious that geothermal and hydropower has been eliminated altogether. To me this just looks like he’s playing to monopolizing capitalists that can charge for corn (biomass) like they do for oil, using the same infrastructure nationwide. By limiting what types of alternative energy we promote, leads to less diversity in a country where one region, like Michigan, might benefit from hydrogen power more realistically than the desert of the southwest where solar power would prevail, and the northwest where geothermal activity might produce energy for that region. But heaven forbid there would be a reduction in national monopolies like big oil. We’re long overdue to think outside the box. This should be a time of welcome innovation for renewable energy sources and a surge in entrepreneurs for the “green.”

NASA had to shelve a $200 million dollar satellite mission headed by a MIT professor because of budget cuts by the Bush administration. They also had to cancel the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project that measures global precipitation, and the launch of a new satellite to replace one of our aged, primary weather satellites. All would help scientists better understand the impact of global warming. What does that mean for us? With the weather growing more erratic, we won’t know sooner, but possibly later, maybe too late, what lies in store for us as far as droughts, floods, and hurricanes. It also affects the accuracy of severe weather forecasts and scientist’s ability to improve climate models with greater precision, so we know what’s going to happen far enough ahead of time to save our lives.