As Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, and so many Democrats say, never let a good crisis go to waste
President Obama used the flooding in the Red River Valley to insist that society needs to take global warming seriously.
In a White House interview with a handful of reporters, including Janell Cole of the Forum of Fargo, the president said the current flooding cannot necessarily be blamed on global warming, but he said it should be a signal to act.
Go that? Even though it may not be the fault of AGW, hey, let’s “do something.” Which usually involves people getting soaked. $$$ soaked.
As Scott at Powerline points out, Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no reason to think that the flooding has anyhing to do with global warming. The Red River is unfortunately prone to Spring flooding. It is a regularly recurring phenomenon. As Wikipedia explains:….
Maybe Obama should blame Clinton for not following the signal and acting after the Midwest flood in 1993, as well as the many others from 1993 through Jan 2001. There was also a big Red River flood in 1997, lasted several months, from massive snowmelt. Which tends to happen in April and May.
And, oh, goodness, there were big floods in Georgia, Idaho, and Pennsylvania during the time period in the 1970’s when the media was worried about the coming ice age. And many more during the 20th Century. And let’s not forget about the Johnstown Flood in 1889.
Now, I am not saying that the natural process of global warming cannot cause more and worse floods (very strange word, if you think about it,) but, it is rather hysterical (not the funny version) to say we need to “do something” about events that will happen whether it is colder or hotter. The AGW Believers want to bring CO2 back to 1990 levels. Well, big floods happened before that year, too.
Yes Teach it floods every year but this is THE BIGGEST FLOOD EVAH !!
And let’s not forget the really BIG FLOOD Saturday Nov 16th 2343 B.C. which of course coincides with a period of Global Warming. http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2003/deluge.html
You do of course believe in th ehistorical accuracy of the Great Book ?
Maybe it is the biggest, maybe not. But, it happens, happened before and long ago, and will till the river dries up.
John, I believe in God, but I do not necessarily take the Bible as the all literal Word, since it was written by men.
But, hey, you never know, do ya? And, with the Mayan prophecies, after 2012, it might all not matter. Oh, man, the world could get really wacko leading up to Dec 24 2012. Could make the whole Y2K think look like chump change.
So lets see, GW is melting the northern ice cap, melting one side of the southern one, and increasing the other side, and causing so much snow in the mid-west that when it melts, and floods the lower areas of the valley below. Hmmm, interesting how GLOBAL warming seems to be so locally impactful in such dimetrically oppposed ways.
Maybe people should look back a little bit further and ask why the earth has been warming for 18,000 years and back to when that whole area was under 1,000 feet of ice, and figure out why there were advancing and retreating giant ice sheets which created those valleys in PA which created the rivers that in the case of Johnstown was damned with an earthen dam to create a lake for a restort. The dam of corse failed, after years of warnings by the engineer which was ignored by restort.
You might want to read about Milankovitch.
In fact if you trust wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
Here is a report from 96 about that years reduced risk:
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/mar96/noaa96-15.html
You see when you don’t have a “crisis” to “take advantage of” and to hype the Al Gore Urgency Blimp seems to deflate, and the effects of flooding in the mid-west seem to be back to being just normal occurences. Seems to me I remember record snow fall this past winter…
Oh well here Noaa predicted it:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/nho/index.shtml
At Grand Forks , the Red River has a 100% chance of exceeding the major flood level of 46 feet or 18 feet above flood stage. The top of the Grand Forks dike system, built after the 1997 Red River flooding, is at a level of 60 feet. The Red River at Grand Forks has a 10% chance of exceeding 54.35 feet, the record flood level set on April 22, 1997. These outlooks are subject to change based on the timing of the Spring melt combined with future precipitation and any river ice-jam flooding.
Thanks for your time.
Some great links there, Robx, and, you are right, they had some massive snow this year.