International Weather Headlines Today

By pure happenstance, I ran across all the following headlines today, not searching for them, on websites home news pages today.

Unusually heavy late monsoon season flooding kills scores

California city hit by series of weird weather events

Record September snowstorm drops 4 feet of snow on Montana

NASA finds Typhoon Mitag’s eye east of Taiwan

And finally, this.

Hurricane Lorenzo sinks Tugboat carrying 14 crew members; at least 1 found dead at sea, 3 rescued

All today. All in one day. And again, I wasn't searching for them. They weren't all together. They were just randomly out there.

Common thread there?

Maybe what scientists predicted with warmer global temperatures and oceans?

Maybe?

Links:

Global warming can make extreme weather worse

Extreme weather gets a boost from climate change

How the Weather Gets Weaponized in Climate Change

Montana State Supreme Court sees things clearly

The Montana Supreme Court sees what you and I see and what the Supreme Court can't: Montana High Court Says 'Citizens United' Does Not Apply In Big Sky State State Supreme Court Issues Remarkable Ruling Against Corporate Speech

From the article: “Organizations like WTP that act as a conduit for anonymously spending by others represent a threat to the political marketplace,” wrote Mike McGrath, Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, for the majority. “Clearly the impact of unlimited corporate donations creates a dominating impact on the political process and inevitably minimizes the impact of individual citizens.” And thank goodness. The whole world hasn't lost its collective mind after all. Now, one down, 49 states to go. It's enough to give one a glimmer of hope, at least. Thank you, Montana State Supreme Court. It's a new year's gift. Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/153623/montana_high_court_says_%27citizens_united%27_does_not_apply_in_big_sky_state

Some good news for the new year

A little good news... 8 states are raising their Minimum Wage rates on New Year's Day, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Their rates will increase by 28 to 37 cents an hour to between $7.64 and $9.04. The National Employment Law Project (NELP) calculates that will bring nearly 1.4 million full-time minimum wage workers an extra $582 to $770 per year. Studies show that even during times of high unemployment, raising the minimum does not lead to a loss of jobs. Actually, the number of jobs has grown after each of the 19 times the federal minimum has increased over the past 73 years. Happy new year, y'all.

Hurricane and floods, of course: Next up? Wildfires on the West Coast

2011 will, I think, go down as the year of all years, in terms of weather, it seems. With Texas and Oklahoma, at least, broiling in the sun and high, high temperatures, and then all the flooding from the North central part of the country--Montana and the Dakotas--South, following the Missouri and then Mississippi Rivers. This weekend's Hurrican Irene didn't help things any and now wildfires have broken out on the West Coast in California, in and around Yosemite. I refuse to lay this at the feet of global warming or climate change, though that may well be what's contributing to it all. Instead, I merely watch the ice caps and glaciers melting and know those are surely far bigger examples of global warming's handiwork. Links: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/wildfire-outside-yosemite-forces-evacuations.html; http://www.google.com/#hl=en&cp=22&gs_id=1v&xhr=t&q=Yosemite+wildfires+news&pq=yosemite+wildfires&pf=p&sclient=psy&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=Yosemite+wildfires+new&aq=0w&aqi=q-w1&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=87cd2c56f2a7d925&biw=1424&bih=711

A prescient, observant brother and citizen

My brother emailed me today and informed of the following letter he wrote to the US Army Corps of Engineers last December--see the date--cautioning them on the record snows up North and what might be expected:

                                                        December 23, 2010

Dear General Van Antwerp;

Record snowfall in the Dakotas and Minnesota and this is only December.  Please, please consider increasing the release of water from upstream dams on the Missouri river now to lessen the chances for flooding in downstream states this spring.  Your early action now can make all the difference for farmers and residents in many states.

Sincerely and respectfully,

And sure, it can be argued that they have to be cautious and careful but here's the case of an aware citizen, lacking all the information they have at their disposal and already, back in December, noticing a record amount of snowfall up North, thinking it might be prudent to increase the flow of these upstream dams on the Missouri, as a precaution, far in advance of possible heavier flooding.  

They didn't start doing it until many, many months later.

It's a little bit of "armchair quarterbacking" now, in June, but it surely wasn't back then, in December.

Just saying.

Good call, bro.

Flooding coming down the Missouri

That flooding that was formerly way up North in Montana and the Dakotas is now coming down already to Southern Iowa and Northwest Missouri:

Army expects floods to fully breach the Missouri River levee

By GRANT SCHULTE, Associated Press 

HAMBURG, Iowa – Massive sandbags dropped on a faltering Missouri River levee have temporarily fortified the floodwall and given Army engineers more time to construct a secondary barrier to protect a threatened Iowa community, authorities said Monday.

The earthen levee, which guards an area of farmland and small towns between Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City, has been partially breached in at least two places south of Iowa's border with Missouri, and emergency management officials said they expect new breaches in the coming days as the river rises.

"We anticipate these compromises rearing their ugly heads all up and down the levee system throughout this event," Rhonda Wiley, the emergency management director for Atchison County, Mo., said Sunday. "It's not a pretty picture."

The Army Corps of Engineers began building a secondary flood wall to protect low-lying areas of Hamburg, Iowa, because it expects the northernmost breach of the floodwall, which is 5 miles southwest of town, to fully give way at some point.

That breach constituted a 10- to 15-foot-wide section of the levee collapsing in on itself on Sunday, Kim Thomas, the head of the corps' emergency management office in Omaha, said in a statement. The corps evacuated its personnel from the area and the Iowa National Guard used a helicopter to drop 22 half-ton sandbags on the weakened section, stabilizing it temporarily.

Although Hamburg is upriver, a full breach of that section of levee would cause floodwater to flow northward over the flat terrain and threaten the town's low-lying southern neighborhoods.

About half of Hamburg's roughly 1,100 residents were ordered Sunday to leave their homes within 24 hours, and that process should be completed by Monday evening, said John Benson, a spokesman for Iowa's department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Several residents of Atchison County were also ordered to leave.

And the heck of it is that the dams much farther North were only recently opened so it's only going to get far worse over the next few weeks, unfortunately.  If you drive along the Missouri River as I do so frequently, you know the river is nearly over its banks already.

Also, so you know where Hamburg, Iowa is, it's only about 20 miles as the crow flies, Northwest of Rockport, Missouri, which had it's own temporary breach:

An earlier breach of the levee near Rock Port, 15 miles south of Hamburg, caused a leak that shot water like a "like a small geyser," said Gen. Derek Hill, head of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Crews stabilized that partial breach, the corps said.


The Missouri River was expected to rise about 8 feet to 1,098 feet above sea level by June 14 in the city of about 2,500 people, some of whom have evacuated ahead of the planned crest. Officials said construction of the primary levee is still under way to protect the city 2 feet beyond the projected high level.

It's just going to get significantly worse before this goes away.

The "disease cluster" in our backyard

A report came out Monday tells of possible "disease clusters" occurring in the US:

Report: 42 disease clusters in 13 U.S. states identified

At least 42 disease clusters have occurred in 13 U.S. states since 1976, according to a report Monday by environmentalists calling for further study of the cause of these health problems."Communities all around the country struggle with unexplained epidemics of cancers, birth defects and neurological diseases," report co-author Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Naural Resources Defense Council, said in announcing the findings. "The faster we can identify such clusters, and the sooner we can figure out the causes, the better we can protect residents living in the affected communities."  

On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled an oversight hearing on the issue.

The 13 states, you ask?  They include:  Texas, California, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Delaware, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas.  (Go to the first link, below, to read of some examples.  The one on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina was a stunner since it was happening to males and with breast cancer.  You have to figure the federal government would possibly be responsible for that one, what with a huge military base there). 

I thought you'd want to know.

Now, I'd like to know where in Missouri this "disease cluster" is.  Is it in Sugar Creek?  Cameron, as some people have claimed up there?  Across the state in the St. Louis area?  Where, exactly?

Having Googled it, I can tell you it's in Herculaneum.  (see link below)

At least that's the one in the state that is recognized.  Who knows?  There may be more than one.

Further proof, as though we needed it, that the way we live is unsustainable.

Links:  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/03/42-disease-clusters-13-states-toxics-environment/1?csp=34

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_382c4b9a-c075-5aa6-9275-60eed4f543f9.html

From the party that wants smaller, less-intrusive government. Yeah, right

Just now, from Yahoo! News: Montana GOP policy: Make homosexuality illegal Yes sir, ladies and gentlemen, the political party that keeps saying it wants smaller and less-intrusive government, comes this little gem. First, they've made it clear for years they want to reach government into the private lives--and wombs--of women and men across the country, telling them they can't have very legal abortions and now this--they want to make it that two consenting adults of the same sex could be arrested for having conjugal sex in the privacy of their own homes. Great idea, that, eh? A little of the article: HELENA, Mont. – At a time when gays have been gaining victories across the country, the Republican Party in Montana still wants to make homosexuality illegal. The party adopted an official platform in June that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997. The fact that it's still the official party policy more than 12 years later, despite a tidal shift in public attitudes since then and the party's own pledge of support for individual freedoms, has exasperated some GOP members. "I looked at that and said, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, said last week. "Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn't be in the Republican Party." At least when the Libertarians say they want smaller and less-intrusive government, they (seem to) mean it. Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gays_in_montana