Hurricane Harvey and Texas

[HermanTheGerman]

It is an irony of fate, that one of the currently biggest desasters of the accelerating global warming hits exactly Texas, the US oil and gas state, led by Greg Abbott, a climate change denyer, and represented in the senate e.g. by Ted Cruz, another climate change denyer.

As if it would not be already enough bad luck, now even president Trump travelled to Corpus Christi to say hello, another climate change denyer.

Maybe these guys should stick their heads together and look into the Clausius Clapeyron equation, which would tell them, that though the storm was not triggered directly by global warming, the resulting size of the desaster can be directly attributed to it. Already since 2010, if not earlier, it is well known, that because of global warming the storms become bigger and carry a lot more water with them than in earlier years.

Until 1980 the variations in extreme rainfalls could be explained by natural factors, but since then there was a clear upward trend of extreme rainfalls in many areas all over the world. The trend showed a congruence with the rise of the average global surface temperature.

The reason for that is, that after the Clausius Clapeyron equation warm air can transport a lot more water (vapor) than cooler air.

Several studies prove, that the increase of superextreme rain events all over the world are in coincidence with what can be expected by the influence of global warming on thermodynamics.

Long speeches sense:  Please teach your politicians, or exchange them !

My mercy is with the people around Houston.

[dmethvin]

This is the third year in a row that Houston has had a "100 year flood", which means the probability of this level of flooding should mean that it happens once every 100 years. However, those probabilities were calculated using historical data. That only works when conditions aren't changing, and they have definitely been changing.

There are at least three factors contributing to this disaster that are due to human influence. One is climate change, the Gulf of Mexico has been warmer than ever over the past few years which provides more moisture and energy for storms like this. A second is the uncontrolled growth around Houston, where they have increased the amount of paved areas by 25 percent in the past 5 years. Replacing swamp or grass with impermeable concrete, roofs, and asphalt means that the rain that does fall accumulates quickly into drains and rivers, raising their levels. The final one is the federal flood insurance program that encourages people to build or rebuild in areas that are flood-prone. It would actually be cheaper to buy people out of their homes in some areas rather than pay for repeated flood losses. If Houston had decent zoning a lot of these homes wouldn't even have been built. 

[LanghamP]

A lot of liberals have some sort of gleeful enjoyment of the misery for a state that went Trump's way; I think this is excellent as a bit of hatred and enjoyment of other people's pain who don't look or act like you is healthy. It's ok to hate on people if you have love in your heart.

I think this picture sums up a lot of people's attitude.

Mind you, in the USA we have a lot of Nazis. There are Nazis everywhere; you can hardly walk down the street without hearing German-speaking card-carrying members of the Nazi party. As an American, I thought we had won WWII 72 years ago, but noooo, here a Nazi, there a Nazi, everywhere a Nazi.

That's why I've actually been learning German; there are so many Nazis in the USA that you gotta know German.

 

[steve454]

This morning I looked at the front page of the newspaper and saw the story of people might start trying to fill up their cars in case of fuel shortages this Labor Day weekend.  Sure enough as I tried to fill my half empty tank, gas stations either had long lines  or were completely out of fuel.  Got lucky and found one on the edge of town that I was able to pull in behind only one car.  That guy filled a 5 gallon gas can before topping off his car.  Some gas stations had lines of 10 or more cars for each set of pumps.  On the radio it was said the price had gone up to 5 dollars a gallon at some stations.  Went to the Quick Trip website and found a list of stations that had fuel, they said that not all QT stations would be refilled when they ran out, only some of them.  This is in the Dallas FT Worth Metroplex area.  I imagine it is much worse in Houston.  When Katrina hit New Orleans, that's when the price of gasoline started going way up,  it slowly came down but was never as low as before.  It seemed like the oil companies used the hurricane as an excuse to raise prices.

[Rocky Romero]

On 8/31/2017 at 5:54 PM, steve454 said:

This morning I looked at the front page of the newspaper and saw the story of people might start trying to fill up their cars in case of fuel shortages this Labor Day weekend.  Sure enough as I tried to fill my half empty tank, gas stations either had long lines  or were completely out of fuel.  Got lucky and found one on the edge of town that I was able to pull in behind only one car.  That guy filled a 5 gallon gas can before topping off his car.  Some gas stations had lines of 10 or more cars for each set of pumps.  On the radio it was said the price had gone up to 5 dollars a gallon at some stations.  Went to the Quick Trip website and found a list of stations that had fuel, they said that not all QT stations would be refilled when they ran out, only some of them.  This is in the Dallas FT Worth Metroplex area.  I imagine it is much worse in Houston.  When Katrina hit New Orleans, that's when the price of gasoline started going way up,  it slowly came down but was never as low as before.  It seemed like the oil companies used the hurricane as an excuse to raise prices.

One million cars were totaled in Houston due to the storm Harvey.

I would think that this is a great opportunity to discover alternate transporters.

An electric transporter when wet would not operate immediately until fully dried, unlike a car.

I'm curious if this would accelerate a more friendly transportation system in Houston?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amberjamieson/houston-is-a-car-city?utm_term=.rklQN4VwD#.pkjQzgL1X

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[steve454]

Well, most of the gas stations have gas again, and people are not lining up anymore, looks almost back to normal, but the price per gallon jumped up about 60 cents a gallon.  Before hurricane the price was about $2.05 a gallon, now it is about $2.65 a gallon for regular.

[Rehab1]

31 minutes ago, steve454 said:

Well, most of the gas stations have gas again, and people are not lining up anymore, looks almost back to normal, but the price per gallon jumped up about 60 cents a gallon.  Before hurricane the price was about $2.05 a gallon, now it is about $2.65 a gallon for regular.

Gas price rose across the country. In Michigan I paid $2.69. I would gladly pay a gas sir tax if the money went to families affected by the hurricane.

[Rocky Romero]

41 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

Gas price rose across the country. In Michigan I paid $2.69. I would gladly pay a gas sir tax if the money went to families affected by the hurricane.

You have cars?

When do you ride your EUC?

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[Rehab1]

2 minutes ago, Rocky Romero said:

You have cars?

When do you ride your EUC?

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A truck to transport the EUCs. 

[Rocky Romero]

5 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

A truck to transport the EUCs. 

Fast forward 20 years..

Any of your truck wheels could be removed and ridden.

Fully recharge when you reattach and drive the truck again.

Electric, of course.

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[Rehab1]

1 hour ago, Rocky Romero said:

Fast forward 20 years..

Any of your truck wheels could be removed and ridden.

It doesn't look comfortable. 

 

 

[Rocky Romero]

5 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

It doesn't look comfortable. 

 

 

Absolutely hilarious!

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[steve454]

11 minutes ago, Rocky Romero said:

Absolutely hilarious!

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[Rocky Romero]

On 8/31/2017 at 5:54 PM, steve454 said:

When Katrina hit New Orleans, that's when the price of gasoline started going way up,  it slowly came down but was never as low as before.  It seemed like the oil companies used the hurricane as an excuse to raise prices.

Hurricane Irma and followed by Jose is causing further damage.

It's causing much concern.

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[steve454]

5 hours ago, Rocky Romero said:

Hurricane Irma and followed by Jose is causing further damage.

It's causing much concern.

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The gasoline price has come down about 5 cents a gallon, so that's a good thing.  Florida looks like it is getting hit hard.

[Rocky Romero]

53 minutes ago, steve454 said:

The gasoline price has come down about 5 cents a gallon, so that's a good thing.  Florida looks like it is getting hit hard.

My brother is flying in from Florida.

Must have booked before they sold out.

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[steve454]

3 minutes ago, Rocky Romero said:

My brother is flying in from Florida.

Must have booked before they sold out.

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[Keith]

11 hours ago, Rocky Romero said:

My brother is flying in from Florida.

Must have booked before they sold out.

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My daughter was crewing a flight to Miami on the 10th, by coincidence she got back from Chicago yesterday. The Miami flight has been cancelled and they have put her on a flight to Lagos instead.

She says she would rather have flown into a hurricane than Lagos!

Seriously, our thoughts are with everyone in the area. I had two friends holidaying in Cuba, to our relief they managed to catch what looks like being the last flight out of the island yesterday.

[HermanTheGerman]

On 8/31/2017 at 10:04 PM, LanghamP said:

A lot of liberals have some sort of gleeful enjoyment of the misery for a state that went Trump's way; I think this is excellent as a bit of hatred and enjoyment of other people's pain who don't look or act like you is healthy.

Your comment missed the point completely.

It is necessary to have mercy with ALL people over the world who are endangered by the consequences of climate change, regardless if they live in the US, Asia, or in my homecountry!

But it is also necessary to teach politicians, who think they know better than thousands of scientists, or who are paid by powerful bank-, coal- or oil lobbies, that they act carelessly and irresponsibly against their own citizens and voters, and it absolutely doesn't help to convulsively close the eyes and accuse others of hatred, who point out that there are severe problems.

If just talking about inconvenient, but clearly recognizable facts is a sign of hatred, then I'm happy to be called a hater.

But I do NOT want that my daughter must grow up in a more and more dangerous environment, just because a silly or corrupt politician doesn't want to accept facts, and I will do everything I can to change that.

[ir_fuel]

59 minutes ago, Asylsteirer said:

But I do NOT want that my daughter must grow up in a more and more dangerous environment, just because a silly or corrupt politician doesn't want to accept facts, and I will do everything I can to change that.

The problem is we arrived at a point in our civilisation where people have been lied to so much by all kinds of "trustworthy" sources that knowledge, science and skill have lost all meaning. What basically happens is that people can't accept the fact anymore that there are other people out there that are smarter than you and/or know a lot more than you about a certain thing. So if they can't understand it themselves, or see the proof themselves (or understand the proof) it's simply "fake news", "conspiracy" or "lies". 

You can see this in all kinds of fields. There are people claiming that the world is flat, that airplane windows have been developed specifically to make us believe this, that there is no such thing as outer space and that we basically live under a dome, and they have entire books to "prove" it and show how we are wrong and being silly sheep to believe what they tell us (no doubt because we are being sprayed with "chem trails" ...). Same story for the anti vaccination movement. Some time ago some idiot publicised a study linking vaccination to autism. This study has been debunked 100's of times in the mean time, and the proof that vaccines work are out there (if not only by proving the opposite, that some deseases are starting to show up again because of lower vaccination rates), and we as a society managed to eradicate certain diseases because of this. But of course this again is not true, it's just "big pharma" trying to keep us sick (need to keep selling those pills!) and maybe we just get drugged by those vaccinations, making us dumb sheep again?

I know people that don't believe a man has ever set foot on the moon. Again, same story. It's all staged, all scientific (and other evidence) is being ignored or dismissed as "fake news", while in theory you could just fly up there and look for the proof yourself (even the Chinese took pictures of the moon landing site, and what incentive would they have to participate in spreading American fake propaganda??).

9/11 Conspiracy theories: just saw one about the building 7 collapse that was caused not by fire, but by controlled explosions, according to some people. Again, reports have been written, in great detail (and not just by some people sitting behind a desk, extended tests were done and simulations) about how this building collapsed, there is video footage too, and changes have been made to the rules wrt building high buildings because of this, but again: "fake news" Because the building came down as in a controlled explosion, so it should have been one, and nobody will convince me otherwise, because I, as a Google Savant citizen know best!  (Let's even consider the fact that the WTC towers were indeed some kind of US job, rockets, explosions, you choose what you want to believe ... what would the collapse of that extra building so many hours later have added to this thing? More plans -> more points of failure -> more chance of leaks).

All the stuff above is pretty solid, as in, you can see/hear/experience those things directly (earth being flat, vaccins, moon landing, 9/11, it's all pretty clear and not some abstract thing). Now imagine having to think about something as abstract as climate change. No the temperature in your garden did not just go up by 10 degrees in 1 year time. No, the sea didn't move more into land by 100miles in 5 years time. You don't live on the South Pole were big chunks of ice break and melt, so what's the fuzz? And then some "idiot" comes and tell you you should stop driving your polluting car because you kill the environment, while a couple of miles down the road there is this huge coal plant generating electricity? Of course you will tell them "screw this". And on a political level it's the same. Either you go with the climate change denier or you go with the one that wants to crack down on everything (including your own car). There seems to be no middle ground. So what are you going to do .... ?

And this is why we get the leaders we deserve. We have come to a point where nobody trusts anyone anymore, and the one with the most convincing "story" (or who shouts the oudest?) wins. We trust someone else to fix our car because we are no specialist, but when it comes to fixing the planet .... ?

 

Rant over

[LanghamP]

2 hours ago, Asylsteirer said:

Your comment missed the point completely.

It is necessary to have mercy with ALL people over the world who are endangered by the consequences of climate change, regardless if they live in the US, Asia, or in my homecountry!

But it is also necessary to teach politicians, who think they know better than thousands of scientists, or who are paid by powerful bank-, coal- or oil lobbies, that they act carelessly and irresponsibly against their own citizens and voters, and it absolutely doesn't help to convulsively close the eyes and accuse others of hatred, who point out that there are severe problems.

If just talking about inconvenient, but clearly recognizable facts is a sign of hatred, then I'm happy to be called a hater.

But I do NOT want that my daughter must grow up in a more and more dangerous environment, just because a silly or corrupt politician doesn't want to accept facts, and I will do everything I can to change that.

I know, without any doubt, that people like you (and me for that matter) won't actually do anything to prevent climate change. If anything, people like you will merely hasten climate change because of the "not in my backyard" mentality that shoves the responsible actions to someone else.

I've only ever seen two responses when confronted with the facts of climate change.

1. Deny the avalanche of evidence for man-made climate change and continue to live your present lifestyle.

2. Tell other people to sacrifice while making token changes such as recycling while ignoring the huge effects of having children, owning a car, encouraging people to come to a 1st world nation and enjoy a higher standard of living.

Somehow, we've managed to go from 90% of Americans believing the research, to under 50% while increasing the evidence of climate change beyond any doubt.

If you really want to make a change, not just yell at people to make changes while enjoying a high standard of living that spews biocarbons, then you'd sterilize yourself, give up your car, avoid vacations and other trips that require airplanes, live in a small apartment, and all that jazz. I'm certain, though, that that is too much of a sacrifice for you.

Instead, calling out other people (virtue signaling if you will) to make those changes feels much better as it requires no real sacrifice on your part. Sure, denying the science behind CC is bad science but the second option is hypocrisy of the highest order.

[HermanTheGerman]

1 hour ago, LanghamP said:

IIf you really want to make a change, not just yell at people to make changes while enjoying a high standard of living that spews biocarbons, then you'd sterilize yourself, give up your car, avoid vacations and other trips that require airplanes, live in a small apartment, and all that jazz. I'm certain, though, that that is too much of a sacrifice for you.

Instead, calling out other people (virtue signaling if you will) to make those changes feels much better as it requires no real sacrifice on your part.

You made some very good points, which I can't comment because of time constraints, and also because an EUC board is not the right place for a more detailed discussion, and also because I agree on most.

Just ´2 remarks, one about the president of a big country with a dirty economy, and one about me, the citizen of a small country with a dirty economy.

About calling out other people:

I'm only calling out your president, to fulfill what your prior president has signed in Paris, and what nearly ALL other country leaders of the world have done in a very rare minute of common sense. Actually this would be of big value for the US, because otherwise countries like China and the fareast tiger states will take over in the electric age which is in front of us.  Elon Musk has shown one of the ways to go, but even he at the end threw the towel as presidential advisor.

About me:

At least I produce 92% of the electric power we need for our house over the year by myself with a PV powerplant on my roof since 2011, with a system which is comparable to Tesla's Powerwall, which exists in Europe since approximately 2008.  I would also drive an electric car, if I could afford it, but the only REAL cars, no toys, are from Tesla, currently too expensive for me (sorry Nissan, BMW, Renault, Kia and so on).

You are right, I could do more, but I'm also a lazy bum, like to travel and so on, therefore I do not ask others to change their lifestyles, but I definitely ask your president to stand by the contract his country has signed, together with many others, because if he doesn't, that means for the US economy and the citizens also "America is last".

And it means bad times for our whole planet, and "we" and "our" in the sense of the whole mankind, regardless from which country, color or religion.

 

[LanghamP]

This point of view, from a banker to bankers, shows how much money is to be made from the Paris Accords. 

https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/banks-key-to-determining-success-of-paris-climate-deal

My viewpoint is the Paris Accords are a giant tax and subsidy program to encourage development in non biocarbon fuels. Trump fired a huge warning shot across the bow of bankers, telling them to shape up or else he'd cut the teat they suck on off.

The Paris Accords are silly; you're just giving money to people wanting to make a profit while apparently virtue signalling. If you were serious you'd ban all cars that spew biocarbons right now. If you really believe we need to stop global warming, that is.

To me, this is a worthwhile sacrifice. It'll be painful for all of two years as we stump around on our bicycles and foot, until we finally have enough cars. Might do some good, even, as Americans, and especially American women, are the fattest people on this earth.

Ban all internal combustion engines, use solar panels, stop having kids, send the kids you do have to schools within walking distance, stop owning two cars since your wife doesn't reaaallly need to work (or avoid career-oriented women who are more likely to divorce than not), and stop inviting dirt poor immigrants into your country who will simply consume far more resources as they increase their living standards.

[Circuitmage]

 

Yes, our president openly supports Nazis and openly disputes climate change as being man made (or even not man made...but what does it matter if it has been shown to be happening and there is no will to deal with it).

Yes, hurricanes are horrible and will obviously be devastating the same Gulf coastal areas year after year at an accelerated rate. Which begs the question, "Why are we rebuilding?".

No, the US government repeatedly shows it does not really care/does not have the resources/is not really interested in dealing with the aftermath the whole thing.

Yes, our president went on vacation after the photo-op in Houston.

No, don't try to talk to the minority of people that voted for him into office, as nothing you do or say can convince them he is doing anything wrong. 

 

 

[Rocky Romero]

1 minute ago, Circuitmage said:

 

Yes, hurricanes are horrible and will obviously be devastating the same Gulf coastal areas year after year at an accelerated rate. Which begs the question, "Why are we rebuilding?".

 

 

Because it's good for business.

For someone.

Someone other than the one being disrupted.

Short term thinking rather than long term thinking.

Just being human.

The rich will move to higher lands, preferably north, and vacation in the south when not flooding.

Until we are all affected.

Rather, our children's children will be affected.

We'll be long gone, since we borrowed from the future.

Just being a human, selfish and self-centered.

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