15 sites had rainfall exceeding maximum associated with Hurricane Katrina landfall

What is a 100 year flood? A 100 year flood is an event that statistically has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. A 500 year flood has a .2% chance of occurring and a 1000 year flood has a .1% chance of occurring. The map below relates [the] amount of rainfall that fell to the chances of that amount of rain actually occurring.

Climate Progress has been documenting the woefully underreported Tennessee deluge of 2010 aka Nashville’s ‘Katrina’. It was an off-the-charts extreme weather event that human-caused global warming set the table for and almost certainly made more intense, as a leading climate scientist explained to me (interview to be posted next week).

But I didn’t understand just how unprecedented this superstorm was until I saw the above map from the Office of Hydrological Development at NOAA/NWS.  I have never seen a map like this before, but then that may be because there simply aren’t many events to rival this one.  Look at the red streak, which is the area hit by a greater than 1000-year deluge.  And look at how much of western Tennessee was slammed with a greater than 500 year downpour.  This is the “high water” of Hell and High Water.

The NWS has more maps that put the deluge in perspective, including how it compared to Hurricane Katrina’s rainfall:

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Reid: “This is an opportunity for us as a country to move away from fossil fuel, to do a better job of looking at renewable energies that are available to us all over this country.”

“I said to the Republicans, join with me,” Obama said. “There’s been some good work done by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Let’s go. Let’s not wait. Let’s show the American people that in the midst of this crisis, all of us are opening our eyes to what’s necessary to fulfill the promise to our children and our grandchildren.”

Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports today on Obama’s remarks at an SF fundraiser for Sen. Boxer (D-CA) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.  Here’s more:

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Our guest blogger is Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.

As federal authorities struggle to deal with the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it is probably useful to remember that power companies continue poisoning water bodies throughout the nation. The power industry’s successful campaign to sidestep toxic pollution controls has left a legacy of poisoned rivers and lakes. As ugly as this legacy seems, the power industry appears to be maneuvering once again for further delays, trying to use pending Senate climate legislation as an escape hatch.

A draft version of the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act would create a new task force to examine pending EPA air pollution rules for the power industry, and make recommendations about weakening or eliminating public health safeguards in the name of electricity generation reliability. The American Lung Association has warned that this provision could undermine EPA’s efforts to tackle toxic emissions from power plants. That concern was echoed by NRDC, long a leader in the effort to clean up toxic mercury:

Specifically, the draft bill establishes a highly objectionable task force to examine utility industry calls for exemptions from federal environmental laws and regulations that utilities allege are impeding power plant retirements or transitions to cleaner energy. The provision’s language is suffused with utility industry complaints and rhetoric and pleas for payment, making clear the design for a biased exercise. Polluter lobbyists deliver a deregulatory wish list to Congress and federal agencies. The agencies then are authorized by this bill to propose regulatory changes to carry out those wishes.

A spokesman for the utility industry said it welcomed the provision. Read more

The Los Angeles Times reports that some fishermen have “become ill after working long hours near waters fouled with oil and dispersant.”  This is a TP repost.

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Written with Tom Kenworthy, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow.

The catastrophic explosion of the Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig off the coast of Louisiana one month ago cost eleven lives and now threatens the entire Gulf of Mexico with ecological devastation. BP, the foreign oil giant responsible for the disaster, has claimed it was unforeseeable and inconceivable, despite an industry history of similar accidents and years of warnings.

There are obvious limits to how much control the federal government can exert over the frantic and so far hapless effort to stem the catastrophic oil eruption that threatens the entire Gulf of Mexico with ecological devastation. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recognized the sobering reality the government does not have the equipment or technical expertise to simply shove aside BP and its industry partners:

This administration has done everything we can possibly do to make sure that we push BP to stop the spill and to contain the impact. We have also been very clear that there are areas where BP and the private sector are the ones who must continue to lead the efforts with government oversight, such as the deployment of private sector technology 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to kill the well.

But if government has little choice but to keep the perpetrator on the job at the immediate crime scene, it does have a choice when it comes to operations beyond the urgent task of quelling the erupting well. In addition to the efforts to stop the leaks, BP now controls claims processing, environmental contractors on land and sea, volunteer assistance, access to the disaster site, and data collection.

Federal and state governments in the gulf must take greater charge of containing the ecological impacts and coordinating the response, as the President has full authority to do. This requires a greater mobilization than exists today, and Washington needs to send the message that it is in full command of the disaster response with the following actions:

– One highly visible leader at the White House should lead the command and coordination at the cabinet level between the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice, the White House Office of Energy and Climate Policy, the White House Office of Science and Technology, and the Department of Defense. Two excellent choices for this role would be Vice President Joe Biden or energy advisor Carol Browner. This leader should also work directly with the affected states’ governors.

– The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be in charge of onshore coastal recovery and disaster response, assisted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The National Guard under the control of each state’s governor should be fully deployed, with Army units if necessary. The EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should exercise relevant oversight. And any environmental and disaster response contractors working for BP should instead work directly for the federal government.

– The U.S. Coast Guard should clearly be in charge of surface-water recovery and maritime disaster response. The Vessels of Opportunity and other maritime contractors now working for BP should be under contract with the federal government, including research vessels. The Coast Guard with the EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversight should manage dispersant use for cleanup.

– Claims for damages and lost revenues should be put under the authority of the U.S. Coast Guard National Pollution Funds Center. As the scope of this disaster far exceeds the NPFC’s traditional resources, other federal, state, and local claims processing resources must be brought to bear, particularly from the Coast Guard’s sister agency FEMA.

– EPA, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other law enforcement branches of the federal, state, and local government should be exercising subpoena authority if necessary to seize or monitor all ongoing communications and data collection.

– The EPA should immediately bar BP from new federal contracts — including drilling in federally controlled oil fields — because of its repeated environmental crimes.

– The EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must begin a health monitoring program for the most at risk populations so there is a baseline from which to measure health impacts.

– Federal agencies, not BP, should handle spill response hotlines for volunteers, technology ideas, affected wildlife, and others. Full call records need to be logged with incident reports and technology ideas presented publicly on dynamic websites.

– The State Department should continue to reach out to other nations that have experience with disastrous oil spills to see if assistance and ideas are available. This should be a government-to-government effort, not one undertaken by private companies.

BP is required as the responsible party for this apocalyptic disaster to provide full and instant funding for the response by the federal, state, and local governments and their contractors. BP personnel and equipment being used for disaster response in the Gulf should be put under governmental control during the crisis.

BP’s funding should come in the form of an escrow account that draws on BP’s $100 billion in capital reserves, without limit. The federal government should require BP to use its first quarter 2010 profits — $5 billion – to establish the escrow account.

View the original, extended version of the column at the Center for American Progress.

The NYT‘s Elisabeth Rosenthal had another front-page “teach the controversy” piece yesterday, “Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons.”  That has apparently become a specialty of the one-time paper of record (see NYT faces credibility siege over unbalanced climate coverage and The NYT once again equates non-scientists “” Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) “” with climate scientists).

I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT itself quoted last year as “an expert on environmental communications,” for his comments.  Here they are:

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That’s the headline of my new piece in Salon (click here).

The president is in now in genuine political trouble over the BP disaster, some of his own making, some not.

Here are my thoughts — as always, I’d love to hear yours:

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Plus a must-see spoof TV ad: “Brown. It’s the New Green.”

Two new ironic ads on the BP oil disaster — though only the first one is intentionally ironic:
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JR:  If you think we’re going to have to wait until 2020 to see $108 oil and 2035 to see $133, then I have some credit default swaps to sell you (see Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016 and World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).  This is one reason EIA’s long-term forecasts are not viewed as terribly useful by a lot of folks.

Oil to Reach $108 by 2020 as Economy Grows, EIA Says [seriously]

Oil prices will rise to $108 a barrel by 2020 as a global economic rebound boosts demand, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said today.

Average prices for crude oil, which rose 17 cents yesterday to settle at $70.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, will keep climbing beyond 2020 to $133 a barrel by 2035, the EIA said in its yearly International Energy Outlook.

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Credit-default swaps are widely seen as a major contributor to the recent financial meltdown. But the origin of CDS’s with the Exxon Valdez oil disaster isn’t as widely known.

The New Yorker has a long review of a couple of financial books, including Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe.  It details the history of the CDS, an idea that came out of a June 1994 JP Morgan off-site in Boca Raton (where “binge drinking occurred” and  “a senior colleague’s nose was broken”):

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