Unprecedented flooding predicted for Ohio River

This week’s storm system, in combination with heavy rains earlier this month, have pushed the Ohio River and Mississippi River to near-record levels near their confluence. The Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois is expected to crest at 60.5 feet on May 1. This would exceed 100-year flood stage, and be the highest flood in history, besting the 59.5′ mark of 1937.

The latest River Flood Outlook from NOAA shows major flooding is occurring over many of the nation’s major rivers.

Multiple torrential downpours are setting the stage for more 100-year floods in the coming days, as meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports today.

Extreme weather disasters, especially deluges and floods, are on the rise — and the best analysis says human-caused warming is contributing (see Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding).  Last year, we had Tennessee’s 1000-year deluge aka Nashville’s ‘Katrina’.  And  Coastal North Carolina’s suffered its second 500-year rainfall in 11 years.

Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in December, “The term ’100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year” (see Munich Re: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”).

Former hurricane-hunter Masters has a good analysis of how the “Midwest deluge [is] enhanced by near-record Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures”:

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One year after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, “the cleanup isn’t done,” but the foreign oil giant’s first quarter profits are back up on surging gas prices.  “BP has not yet lived up to its legal, financial, or moral obligations to the Gulf and its residents,” says Antonia Juhasz, author of the book, Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.  Brad Johnson has the story.

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Because of decarbonization, Mr. Ausubel believes that the growth of carbon dioxide emissions will be limited. “The computer models of the climate system aren’t good enough and never will be. I tend not to be frightened because I think the natural evolution of the energy system is away from carbon,” he said.

That would be science writer Nicholas Wade in his extended profile of Jesse H. Ausubel, “vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.”  Ausubel has “A Passion for Nature,” according to Ward and may have done more than almost anyone else to catalog marine life.

Sadly, though, the data don’t support Ausubel’s rosy scenario.  The world is “carbonizing” (blue line).  Even the energy system has stopped decarbonizing (see red line and figure below).  Ironically, Ausubel’s ill-informed complacency means his beloved marine life — and indeed terrestrial life in general — will almost certainly fall victim to one of the greatest mass extinctions in planetary history (see Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century” and links below).

Ausubel may “think the natural evolution of the energy system is away from carbon” — but the figure above, derived from Energy Information Administration data that anybody can access (here), makes clear that Ausubel is simply dead wrong.  Actually he is dead wrong on multiple counts.

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It can be difficult to stay motivated in a world where it seems as if “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

That’s why this blog means so much to me:   I get to write and report on everything that is happening, including the good stuff, plus I get to read all the comments and emails from people who care so deeply about this issue.  So to those climate hawks who are feeling de-motivated, I have two messages:

1. Those who oppose strong climate action and aggressive clean energy deployment want you to become disillusioned.  Don’t let them claim that victory.  The stakes are too high.
2. Spend some time with other activists — folks who may not be able to change the entire world but who are least working on their corner of it.  One of my favorite quotes is from Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book, Casino Royale (1953):  “Surround yourself with Human Beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

On that second point, Bonnie Frye Hemphill, who organizes Business Leaders for Climate Solutions, a program of the northwest nonprofit Climate Solutions, has a guest post at WonkRoom about Power Shift 2011 that I repost below:

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Legislators again reject renewable energy plan

Solar and biomass energy companies mourned the loss of a sure job development opportunity Tuesday as the state Senate’s budget chief put a spear through a bill to spur renewable energy in Florida.

“I’d pronounce that one dead,” said Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee after he indefinitely postponed a bill that would have allowed Florida’s largest electric companies to raise electric rates as much as $375 million a year for five years to develop alternative energy.

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Today President Obama gave a speech to the White House press corps to remind them that he was born in the United States. The White House today even released the long-form version of his birth certificate.

The big birther push lately has come from Donald Trump, the flat-earther who has vaulted to the top of the GOP presidential contender list by pushing this nonsense. Today over half of GOP primary voters, do not believe that Obama was born in the US, even though the evidence that he was is readily available and incontrovertible.

Birtherism is a manifestation of the GOP’s embrace of anti-intellectualism and anti-science ideology whose “most harmful delusion” is climate science denial, as even Washington Post‘s Editorial Page Editor “” the guy who runs the disinformation of George Will, BJorn Lomborg and Sarah Palin — acknowledged.

So this seems like a good time to repost and update the 2009 CP post, “The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers“:

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Our guest blogger is Bonnie Frye Hemphill, who organizes Business Leaders for Climate Solutions, a program of the northwest nonprofit Climate Solutions.

Hey climate movement, you know what I missed about us that Power Shift pumped right back into me last week?

The awesome.

Yeah, flashmobs, pranks, swiftly organized warroom tweetups, late-night dance parties of 15,000. Remember that rebellious side of us, that “we won’t take the past for an answer” side of us? Remember that “join us because this is awesome and you’re invited” side of us?

Politics is personal identity built into popular movements. The Tea Party is powerful because it ready-makes an identity for those who feel left behind by the 21st Century. It’s a safe space in a post-9/11, post financial collapse, peak-global-hegemony America. And the Tea Party’s done well wiping up a messy identity crisis by defining what they’re afraid of.

We’re also proud to define ourselves as what we’re not: we are cooler than the fossil forces of the past. They rail on chalkboards; we rally with giant puppets in the streets. They are talking heads for septuagenarians; we are sneaking into shareholder meetings and embarrassing giant fossil fuel companies. They are snarking about crosshairs on Facebook from defensive compounds in Wasilla. We are 10,000 lithe young people fighting for our future while a crotchety old pitbull like Tom Donohue screams to get off of his front yard at the US Chamber of Commerce. We are in the West Wing interrupting the President of the United States of America to remind him that energy shouldn’t kill.

But the past is where we leave the comparison. Those fearful forces haven’t got much vision for the future, and we sure do: we are identity awesome. We are the people not afraid to build something better than the assumptions handed to us.

Other American generations have staked their identities on propositions equally grand – rebelling from tyranny, beating back fascism, defending the world from communism. Our generation is staking its identity as the people responsible enough to face climate science for what it means, and political corruption for what it is. To build a cleaner, leaner, more durable and more prosperous way of life on our full tide of vibrant energy. The people smart enough to put our moral muscle to work.

But we need to remember how to have a blast doing it. Where’s the rebelliousness, the youthful energy pulling more pranks to call out our opposition? Remember when the Yes Men and the Avaaz Action Factory staged a mock press conference on the US Chamber’s “sudden” climate action? Remember when Tim DeChristopher tied on his bandanna and marched into the fray of a corrupt shareholder process? Remember when young people lay down on the train tracks against tremendous new coal facilities? (That hasn’t happened yet, but it should.)

We mustn’t abandon tried-and-true organizing tactics, nor our hard-earned insider game. And if we do rebel our way into a better world, we do so on the shoulders of giants: after all, we’re now defending the Clean Air Act that our foremothers first passed, celebrating Earth Day last week because our forefathers founded the first four decades ago. And we need the scientific white papers still, because after all, we’re fighting for a political reality that keeps pace with the chemical reality of the atmosphere. This is a movement of the young and young at heart – if you are awesome, you are in.

News release likely to peeve climate hawks a tad

Ben Santer is a man with a lot of accolades under his belt: A recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant; an E.O.Lawrence Award; a Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Distinguished Scientist Fellowship; contributor to all four assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore; and now an American Geophysical Union fellowship.

But he’d give all the awards up if it meant he could present his research on human-induced climate change to a patient audience — an audience that would listen to all the facts before making judgments about reality of a “discernible human influence” on climate.

That’s the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) news release congratulating one of our top climatologists on some well-deserved recognition.  My only quibble is the wishy washy sentence that follows:

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When Rush Limbaugh says “jump,” the Speaker of the House apparently says, “Can I do a flip, too?”  John Boehner courageously supported ending taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil for 12 hours, as CP noted yesterday.

Obviously Boehner heard from Big Oil about his claim that oil companies are “not paying their fair share.”  But Think Progress has the story of someone else Boehner heard from:

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