One billion dollar weather disasters in the US

Listening to the Weather Channel last evening, with a lot of thunderstorm warnings all around my new 'burg--yet again--the announcers mentioned that the last several years has seen a great deal of $1 billion dollar weather disasters in the US. They seemed to softly suggest that it was likely due to global warming and/or climate change.

So I Googled:

Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters, 1980–2013

Source: National Climatic Data Center
 

The U.S. has sustained 123 weather-related disasters during the 1980-2012 period in which overall damages and costs reached or exceeded $1 billion at the time of the event. Twelve occurred during 2011 alone—the most for any year on record, with total costs being approximately $52 billion.

Then I searched some more:

NCDC Releases 2012 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

According to NCDC’s 2012 weather and climate disasters information, 2012 saw 11 weather and climate disaster events each with losses exceeding $1 billion in damages. This makes 2012 the second costliest year since 1980, with a total of more than $110 billion in damages throughout the year. The 2012 total damages rank only behind 2005, which incurred $160 billion in damages due in part to four devastating land-falling hurricanes.

The 2012 billion-dollar events included seven severe weather and tornado events, two tropical cyclone events, and the yearlong drought and its associated wildfires. These 11 events killed over 300 people and had devastating economic effects on the areas impacted. With 11 events, 2012 also ranks second highest in total number of billion-dollar events behind 2011, which had 14 events.

The two major drivers of the damage costs in 2012 were Sandy at approximately $65 billion and the yearlong drought at approximately $30 billion. Sandy’s large size, with tropical storm force winds extending nearly 500 miles from the center, led to record storm surge, large-scale flooding, wind damage, and mass power outages along much of the East Coast.

So it begs the question: at what point do we learn?

At what point do our nation's leaders stand up, recognize the situation we're in and lead the people, lead the country to what we need?  That is, how soon until they guide us onto a path of far more sustainable lives and living?

We need to get started.

Links: Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters, 1980–2013 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882823.html#ixzz2WWF0Lozm

Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters

At what point do we learn? At what point do we change?

I was speaking last evening, late, with a friend that recently retired from the federal government's National Weather Service and told him what I thought--that all it's going to take, I expect, is one more hit, one hit in Florida of some major city, heaven forbid, and finally, finally more people will think there likely is a good chance of humans effecting weather with all the CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere.

Heaven forbid it's Miami but there it sits, like a bit of a big bullseye, jutting out into big bodies of water. 

Purely coincidentally, after I wrote this entire piece, I ran across this article:

As hurricanes loom, Florida insurance lives on borrowed time

Because of its size and geographical position, with 1,200 miles of coastline on a peninsula sticking out into the warm waters where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, Florida is a uniquely risky insurance market. Most of its insured residential and commercial property - 79 per cent - lies in coastal areas vulnerable to both wind damage and flooding.

Coastal property is valued at just under $3 trillion, according to a report due to be released next week by AIR Worldwide, a global leader in catastrophe risk modeling. Florida accounts for almost 30 percent of the nation's entire $10 trillion coastal exposure, AIR found.

Only New York has as much exposure, with $3 trillion in coastal property, and that compares to $239 billion in South Carolina and $107 billion in Georgia.

Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona, you name it. When/if that should happen, it'll be game over for Florida, if it's a big enough storm. There will be lots more believers.
In the meantime, there's Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, repeatedly hit by tornadoes in the last week.

Did you know there were 9--nine tornadoes in the last 36 hours?

And in the last 24 hours, there was this:

5 dead in tornado in Oklahoma City area, 50 hurt

And that, of course, is on top of the direct hit the suburb of Oklahoma City took in Moore, the previous week.

At what point do we think maybe the way we humans live on this planet maybe isn't sustainable?

At what point do we maybe think we need to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

On the President's speech in Joplin last evening

Like it or not, whatever your political party, President Obama hit at least a home run with this commencement speech to the Joplin graduating class last evening.

Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/21/3621338/obama-to-joplin-graduates-you.html; http://www.kmbc.com/news/31095345/detail.html

Quote of the day

"Greed is guiding much of the world, not common sense or intelligence. Those last two won't kick in until we've created an emergency and/or catastrophe for ourselves, sadly." --me

Here's hoping good things for Kansas and Oklahoma tomorrow

Hopefully this isn't what it looks like through the plains tomorrow. If you haven't seen tomorrow's forecast, you should.

Dr. Helen Caldicott on Fukushima and you, Part 4

More on Dr. Caldicott here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Helen_Caldicott

If you don't think Fukushima affects you, us...

Part 3: Seriously, each of these 4 14 minute talks are full of fascinating, though alarming, pertinent information for the entire nation. She's a wonderful speaker and extremely informative. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Helen_Caldicott

This woman is bloody brilliant

Dr. Helen Caldicott speaking on the Russian Chernobyl nuclear accident, the Fukushima disaster and all the inherent radiation spread over the world, Part 2 (of 4): Compulsory voting in Australia or you're fined $50 for not voting. Three week long political campaigns. Wow. Fantastic political stuff but check this out, too--she states "In Seattle, the ambient levels of radiation went up about 40,000 times above normal." Concerned yet? And have we heard anything from our government about it? Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Helen_Caldicott

What we don't know about Chernobyl--and now Fukushima--and radioactivity

From the video information: "Dr Helen Caldicott spoke to a standing room only crowd at the Faulkner Gallery in Santa Barbara on Friday evening March 23, 2012 on 'The Medical Implications of Fukushima, Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation'". This is so worth the fourteen minutes and 43 seconds it takes to watch this, it's stunning. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Helen_Caldicott

Finally: News about the radiation on the US from Fukushima

Ever since the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan blew, I've wondered how much radiation hit the US. And since then, I've seen nothing, nothing about it from media or our government. That surprised me a bit--I'm very naive about far too much--and disappointed me. Finally, today, an article on the internets: California Slammed With Fukushima Radiation "The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California 'with greatest exposure in central and southern California', and that Southern California's seaweed tested over 500% higher for radioactive iodine-131 than anywhere else in the U.S. and Canada: Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m−3." As the post then so wisely and succinctly says: "Anaheim is where Disneyland is located." Just in case you're thinking no one's out there or effected.

But wait! There's more! There's much, much more! (Naturally) In addition, radioactive debris is starting to wash up on the Pacific Coast. And because the Japanese are burning radioactive materials instead of disposing of them, radioactive rain-outs will continue for some time … even on the Pacific Coast. Nice, huh? So what are our respective governments doing about it, if anything, you might ask? Your answers: Instead of doing much to try to protect their citizens from Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. and the EU all just raised the radiation levels they deem “safe”.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that high-level friends in the State Department told him that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food not being tested for radioactive materials.

And the Department of Energy is trying to replace the scientifically accepted model of the dangers of low dose radiation based on voodoo science. Specifically, DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley Labs used a mutant line of human cells in a petri dish which was able to repair damage from low doses of radiation, and extrapolated to the unsupported conclusion that everyone is immune to low doses of radiation… Isn't that all just lovely? So, finally, what is our government's response to information and data going foward? Great question: American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. If you weren't sick before, you probably should be now. (If after all that, you really are nauseous--not surprisingly--the comments at the links below have some magnificent, very dry and ascerbic wit to them, if that helps). Links: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-13-30/california-slammed-fukushima-radiation; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/update-fukushima-0; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/fukushima-radiation-highest-ever-exceeding-capacity-measuring-device-fuel-likely-leaking; http://www.zerohedge.com/article/no-amount-radiation-released-japanese-nuclear-reactors-not-safe; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/radioactive-iodine-blankets-much-europe-everyone-points-fingers

Yet another well done and important story from Frontline on PBS

Last evening, PBS ran another "Frontline" story, this one on Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster after the tsunami they experienced last March 11. Besides telling an important story and getting the details of what happened to all these people, it also struck me how their Prime Minister Naoto Kan seemed to take charge of the situation, along with taking responsibility. I also respected and appreciated the honor he seemed to take in what became his job. I would love to see that from our elected officials, of course, at all times, but especially in times of these national emergencies and catastrophies. It would have been really nice to have seen when Hurrican Katrina hit the Gulf states here. What strikes me now, however, is that I'd like to hear the truth about what radioactive fallout hit the US and in what amounts, from the West Coast to East. Anyone? News media? Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/japans-nuclear-meltdown/

While they were screwing us on this debt deal...

...the Republicans were also putting riders into bills last week to strip our environmental laws of any real "teeth". From The New York Times this past Sunday: Concealed Weapons Against the Environment. "While almost no one was looking, House Republicans embarked last week on a broad assault on the nation’s environmental laws, using as their weapon the 2012 spending bill for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. When debate began Monday, the bill included an astonishing 39 anti-environmental riders — so called because they ride along on appropriations bills even though they have nothing to do with spending and are designed to change policy, in this case disastrously. Riders generally are not subjected to hearings or extensive debate, and many would not survive on their own. They are often written in such a way that most people, even many Capitol Hill insiders, need a guide to understand them. They are, in short, bad policy pushed forward through a bad legislative process. A rider can be removed from the bill only with a vote to strike it. The Democrats managed one big victory on Wednesday when, by a vote of 224 to 202, the House struck one that would have gutted the Endangered Species Act by blocking the federal government from listing any new species as threatened or endangered and barring it from protecting vital habitat — a provision so extreme that even some Republicans could not countenance it." To show how they're screwing us and the environment, go to this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/concealed-weapons-against-the-environment.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=environment&st=Search

As Gomer Pyle used to say: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

From the news yesterday:

Special Report: Fuel storage, safety issues vexed Japan plant

By Kevin Krolicki and Ross Kerber – Mon Mar 21, 11:37 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.

The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.

At the time of the March 11 earthquake, the reactor buildings at Fukushima held the equivalent of almost six years of the highly radioactive uranium fuel rods produced by the plant, according to a presentation by Tokyo Electric Power Co to a conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Okay, my thought and hope now is that I'm hoping some enterprising newspaper staff--or maybe a bunch of them--starts going around to their own local nuclear power plant and doing some hard research on how that plant is doing at what they do.  I'd like to think they'll go start asking questions.

Do they store their nuclear materials properly?

Do they do their safety checks?

Are their backup power generators in great working order?

Have they had any radioactive releases lately?

Are all their checks done, regularly and on time?

Is everything in order?

Are all their i's dotted and t's crossed?

I don't think it will happen but I hope it does.  I hope some newspaper staffs out there in this country are, right now, prepping their reporters to go do a check on their local nuclear reactor(s), its staff and their operations.

A challenge to newspapers, all across the country.

How about you, Kansas City Star?

Link to original post:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110321/wl_nm/us_japan_nuclear;_ylt=AqR_1NtsN900p4j63C9YAVFH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTMwMjd1b29lBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwMzIxL3VzX2phcGFuX251Y2xlYXIEY2NvZGUDZ21wcmRlBGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDMwRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA2hpc3RvcnlvZnNhZg--

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