30 August 2011

Not Anti-Science, Just Utterly Uninformed

I find it extraordinary that so many political leaders won’t actually talk about the relationship between climate change, fossil fuels, our continuing irrational exuberance about burning fossil fuels, in light of these storm patterns that we’ve been experiencing. Listen, since I’ve been sworn in as governor just seven months ago, I have dealt with—this is the second major disaster as a result of storms. We had storms this spring that flooded our downtowns and put us through many of the same exercises that we’re going through right now. We didn’t used to get weather patterns like this in Vermont. We didn’t get tropical storms. We didn’t get flash flooding. It wasn’t—you know, our storm patterns weren’t like Costa Rica; they were like Vermont.

A quick look at the following paper from 2002 -- "Climate Variability and Socioeconomic Consequences of Vermont's Natural Hazards: A Historical Perspective" (here in PDF) by Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux (Vermont's state climatologist), reveals this information:

One of the most pervasive hazards that impinges upon and marks the Vermont landscape is flooding. Flooding can be categorized as one of two types: flash flooding, which has a rapid onset of six hours or less from the time of the initiating event; and flooding that has a more gradual onset. Rarely does a year elapse without a flooding event of a significant magnitude being reported in at least one of Vermont’s fourteen counties or perhaps statewide, making this the number-one hazard across the state. Between 1955 and 1999, floods accounted for $16.97 million in damage annually.

And also:

[T]ropical remnants have produced widespread, and at times, catastrophic flooding. For example, the Great Flood of 1927 resulted from record rainfall totals produced by tropical storm remnants on November 3, following October precipitation totals that were already 50 percent above normal. As this decaying storm tracked directly along the spine of the Green Mountains, streams rose so rapidly that there was little time for warning. The Winooski River rose 40–45 feet above its normal level, causing land and settlement along the river to bear the brunt of the estimated $30 million in economic losses. The 1927 flood was greater than the 100-year flood on many rivers and remains today as the flood of record at many gauging stations. Eighty-four of the eighty-five fatalities during this New England-wide flood occurred in Vermont. In addition, thousands of dairy cows and other farm animals drowned. Rich topsoil on farmland either washed away or got buried under infertile silt, such that no crops could be produced for many years. Montpelier remained isolated for days and Waterbury for weeks. The flood disrupted communications across the state and with the outside world, producing a “black triangle.”