Newsweek: Freak storms are the "new normal" and the future is "harrowing"

Are You Ready for More?

In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. Why we’re unprepared for the harrowing future.

Joplin, Mo., was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes’ notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John’s, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.

Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.

From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.. . .

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/29/are-you-ready-for-more.html

Exactly how do you prepare for utter destruction?

...the father of all Morlocks?

:shrug:

PB

that it seems are too overwhelming for the MSM to even report on now. I've never gotten over the cluster-F...k that was Katrina and Joplin--following Alabama and other major tornadoes--simply breaks my heart.

How does one move from the bitterness and contempt towards greedy REPUG corporatists who have denied global warming and held us back from any response for three decades now? They will, from their greed-driven intransigence-- kill countless millions....

full speed ahead and never look down.

or move underground. :)

:sarcasm:

That's about the only thing the mouth-breathers can say in response to this.

We are screwn. I regret that my life will end as this is happening, and I regret even more that the next generation will have it even worse.

No way will sufficient numbers of people ever agree on, much less implement, any course of action that will inconvenience them individually. We may have aggravated the situation but we can't reverse it...only time and the forces of nature can do that.

less beach in FL/NC/SC/etc, the sheeple will understand.

I live west of the Rockies and we have had storm after storm push through this spring. Snow is still accumulating in the high country and we are preparing for an enormous run off once it warms up.
The storms have been accompanied with cooling temps, though not freezing fortunately. A day or two following the rain here is when the tornado activity picks up in the mid west. We have just had a large wet mass over the last two day with high winds and I suspect the next day or two will be as bad as it gets for the plains folk. With the heat now in the south and this blanket of cold air coming I would be prepared for anything.

due to the high snowpack and recent high temperatures in Idaho. Interesting times.

we've had record-breaking cool weather.

Here's what Weather Underground has to say:

Temperature
Today
High-58 °F
Low-49 °F

Average
High-87 °F
Low-61 °F

Historical Range
High-59 to 109 °F
Low-45 to 82 °F


Note that the "high" was a record and it's lower than the average low.

Forecast? Rain through Saturday. :P

I think this year's hurricane season will be extraordinary.

As I write this, it's 95 in DC. In May. I know you can't project global warming based on any day's temps, but last summer was brutal. Couldn't be outdoors.

I'm predicting this summer will be worse.

it IS true that on average the planet is warming up but it isn't obvious because of the far more significant extremes in certain places at certain times. For example, back in January, just a few miles west of here (southwest Missouri) the temperature fell to 40 degrees BELOW Zero one night. Just as you pointed out that one day doesn't prove anything, the PERCEPTION by people with no scientific or climatological training is that it's actually getting =colder=...

I find it useful (sometimes) to explain it this way: If you drive from Houston to Denver, you will go DOWN a lot of hills on the way, but you will still end up a mile higher than you started. It's an analogy most people can grasp.

many on DU want the to keep the term global warming. I expect you'll be getting replies from those people shortly.

:D

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I SAID it is warming. Did you even read my post?
:eyes:

I just suggests to those folks that I always appreciate sharp critical thinking skills and leave it at that.

As far as I'm concerned, if they think I'm complimenting them, the deserve the results of their delusion.



I got your drift... there are a few of us who understand subtlety.

He suggested that it wasn't necessarily the most useful descriptive term. I agree. The fact is that stupid people will deny its existence based on a day that's colder than average.

I happen to agree with him that the characterization "global climate change" is a better and more useful term to use.

It's not necessarily that the weather is getting warmer, it's getting crazier.

Over the past few years we haven't had much snow compared to a decade ago. This year we got totally, utterly dumped on. I ended up buying a snowblower and even it got overwhelmed.

because the "earth will endure" without us and 99% of the other species who inhabit it. :eyes:

Blah Blah Blah

Bugger off, Newsweek.

Thanks for the thread, Faygo Kid.

He predicted that more heat in the atmosphere would lead to more unpredictable weather, not just warming.