The authors lack of understanding of basic probelms is killing me.
100 year floods is a media term. The proper definition of a 100 year flood plane means the odds of a flood are 1 in 100 during any given year.
It also needs to be noted that most flood plain tables were created when much of the country was still rural. Paving over hundreds of square miles in a flood plain, installing storm drains to rush the water away and the destruction of countless acres of water holding wet lands has altered the natural flow of water in many parts of the country.
Flash floods happen far more often than they did 100 years ago and major flooding downstream happens far more often. We have also over developed in flood prone areas adding to the impact of rising water.
Did you know that there has been over $3 billion in development in areas that were submerged fields during the Great 1993 Mississippi flood?
Who is dumber? The person who built there or the person who blames global warming for the results of other peoples stupidity?
“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading the latest news concerning climate change.
1.) Canada pulls the plug on environmental programs. Scientists in the U.S. say they are concerned that Canadian budget cuts will hamper important international research efforts on climate change, pollution and other regional issues that cut across political boundaries. The cuts have affected the Environment Canada, the government agency responsible for meteorological services and environmental research.
2.) Valentine’s Day destroyed by climate change? A new report from the environmental group Climate Nexus notes that climate change is poised to affect Valentine’s Day in the future, by threatening chocolate production. Research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture found last year that as temperatures rise, the principal growing regions for cocoa could shrink.
3.) Antarctica’s fish threatened by climate change? A study led by Yale University of the evolutionary history of Antarctic fish and their “anti-freeze” protein production illustrates how tens of millions of years ago a lineage of fish adapted to newly formed polar conditions — and how today they are endangered by a warming ocean temperatures. Thomas Near, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the study said: “A rise of 2 degrees centigrade of water temperature will likely have a devastating impact on this Antarctic fish lineage, which is so well adapted to water at freezing temperatures.”
4.) Edinburgh’s supercomputers ‘could tackle climate change’. A new generation of £125m ($198m) supercomputers based in Edinburgh, UK, has the potential to discover new inhabitable planets, tackle climate change and even solve the global financial crisis according to their developers.The machines, known as HECToR and BlueGene have a combined power equivalent to every person on the planet carrying out 250,000 calculations per second at the same time. The machines’ development is being expanded, and the HECToR model is already ten times as powerful as it was when it started out in 2008.
5.) Today’s ‘100-year floods’ may happen every three to 20 years according to research. Powerful storms such as Hurricane Irene could become more frequent weather events, according to researchers from MIT and Princeton University. The team have found that with climate change, such storms could make landfall far more frequently, causing powerful, devastating storm surges every three to 20 years. The group simulated tens of thousands of storms under different climate conditions, finding that today’s “500-year floods” could, with climate change, occur once every 25 to 240 years.
Image credit: Teo Romera
Related:
