Josh Mogerman's Blog
Global Warming: it could look a lot like Iowa
June 17, 2008
Posted by Josh Mogerman in Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming
“Call back later---we are busy sandbagging.”
That was all my worried sister-in-law heard from her former neighbors in Iowa City after calling to check up on them. The Iowa River runs through the leafy college town and after weeks of rain it has risen to 31.5 feet above flood stage, inundating much of the town and University of Iowa campus. Later, she had a chance to catch up with her drenched former neighbors and heard the same painful stories that are sadly common throughout the Midwest this week.
Both of her former homes had been affected by the rising river. Earlier in the week, police pounded on doors in the middle of the night to hurriedly evacuate the neighborhood and her old house was soon swamped by the flood. And the landmark apartment building she had lived in for a time had waters lapping at the top of the steps, despite sitting at the peak of a huge hill overlooking much of the now-submerged town.
The horrible damage is not limited to Iowa City. Most of the state is waterlogged, with the governor declaring 83 of 99 counties as disaster areas. Over 36,000 people are left homeless. And damage is already being estimated in the hundreds of millions to buildings and infrastructure---billions when you factor in this year's lost corn crop. And it will only get worse as the Mississippi is set to crestat levels not seen since the horrific floods of 1993.
My mother flew over the carnage from the 1993 flood in a National Guard helicopter to survey damage to Illinois historic sites. She came back shaken from the experience of seeing coffins that had been floated out of their graves making their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico amidst neon glowing water flush with myriad chemicals.
At the time, the 1993 flood was being described as the flood of the century.
Only fifteen years later, Iowa's governor described this year's weather as a "500-year storm."
Unfortunately, these events are likely to become more and more common. While no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, scientists agree that we are likely to see more and more in the way of violent weather patterns as a result of climate change.
We all saw the devastation in New Orleans. Expect the same slow, painful recovery in the flood zones of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. After the flood waters recede, the cameras will go away too. That is when the worst of the floods' damage will be revealed. My mom was astonished by the damage left in the wake of the ’93 flood:
Trees went into hibernation for years. There were objects of every kind hanging from the limbs—chicken coops, clothes, toys, window shutters –everything imaginable. And the filth and stench left behind by the toxic water was awful. I feel great empathy for the people in Iowa and the other flooded states. They have months, and maybe even years, of clean up and repairs ahead of them. It is a daunting and exhausting task to put your life back together after this kind of destruction and displacement.
We cannot stop the floods ravaging the Midwest right now, but we can take action to help prevent future grief and loss by actively moving ahead with efforts to address the climate change issue immediately. Certainly, any assertion that the increase in violent storms we have seen this year are directly related to climate change are anecdotal---but there is no denying that, as the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog pointed out today, global warming will result in more dangerous weather patterns. Hotter air holds more water. And hot air loaded with water vapor is the stuff of raging storms…
We must work to ensure that the devastation in Iowa is not a prelude to more common events in our future. If we continue to sandbag on climate change now, we are guaranteed to be a lot more desperate when we sandbag to protect our homes in the future…
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Comments
Lori Neumann — Jun 18 2008 10:32 AM
As someone who was born and raised in Iowa, and an alumni of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, my heart goes out to all those in the trenches right now. The tragedy and devastion gripping Iowa affects us all...when farmers lose their crops, the entire nation suffers...
Mark T. Groves — Jun 20 2008 04:01 PM
I personally Do Not Agree with your"panic" and Theory on Global warming and would appreciate you taking me off of Your Mailing List..Are You all aware of the amount of ENERGY Mr. Al Gore Uses in His Mansion? Maybe if He Practiced what he's Preaching it would be a Start for the rest of us all to follow his example.Shouldn't he be leading by example after all? Respectfully, Mark T.
RD Walker — Jun 21 2008 11:49 AM
What a load of crap. There is nothing about this situation that logically leads to the conclusion it was caused by man made global warming.
Josh Mogerman — Jun 21 2008 12:35 PM
Mark and RD---
First off, thanks for reading my blog. Whether we agree on the issue or not, I do appreciate you taking the time to look at what I have to say and to let me know your thoughts.
That said, I want to point you to a new study released by yesterday that supports my assertion that these types of weather events are likely to become more common due to global warming---http://www.climatescience.gov. Before you get up in arms about the group issuing the study, you should know that the The Climate Change Science Program is sponsored by thirteen federal agencies and overseen by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality, the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. This comes from the executive branch of the federal government, under the leadership of a president who only recently conceded the existence of global warming---not some liberal think tank or academic institution.
Climate change is an issue that we all must address in our lives very soon---and events like we are seeing in the midwest are a clarion call to action. Two storms of the century in 15 years? Come on...that is unprecedented. As noted before, we cannot tie any single weather event to global warming. But the trend is clear, violent weather patterns are going to become far more commonplace and it behooves us all to operate accordingly. There are significant implications that must be considered as we rebuild along the Mississippi and in Iowa.
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
J
RD Walker — Jun 21 2008 12:55 PM
Yeah, we have had similar "floods of the century" in Eastern Iowa in 1851,
1929, 1961, 1965, 1993 and 2008. The problem is in the definition of what a
"storm of the century" is. There is nothing especially remarkable about the
temperatures or precipitation received this year. It is far from the
coolest or the wettest years on record and there are plenty of cooler wetter
years prior to the C02 hysteria. The bottom line is that we have 136 years
of records in Iowa and many floods. There is no reason to claim that in the
annals of post ice-age history, there is anything remarkable about this
year. It is just cooler than normal. I know the global warming cultists
have already begun marketing cooling caused by warming, but I ain't buying
it.
The bottom line is that the environment is always changing. It always has,
it always will. There isn't one iota of proof that anthropogenic C02 is the
cause of the change that is occurring now. It is just part of continuous
change. The "hockey stick" has been discredited. There is no reason to
believe that a snapshot of the climate in, say, 1965, is the "correct"
climate and the one we get in 2020 is the wrong climate. There is no
evidence that we can change the climate. The alarmism on this issue is
chicken little bull----.