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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 8/15/16

When the Levy Breaks

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Kathy Malloy
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Reprinted from Mike Malloy Website

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While focus is riveted on the orange fruitcake, deadly flooding continues to devastate southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. Seven people have died in the floods, more than 20,000 have been rescued, 11,000 sought refuge in shelters, and the crisis isn't over.

Ariel photographs of the swampy parishes are eerily reminiscent of the hurricane Katrina damage 11 years ago. And as expected, the climate change deniers continue their thick-headed insistence that the record-breaking heat, floods, droughts, and wildfires have any basis in scientific fact.

This is from the Washington Post:

"On Monday, climate researchers and weather experts were in what's by now a familiar posture -- explaining that, no, this event wasn't 'caused' by climate change, but then again, it's precisely the sort of event that you'd expect to see more of on a warming planet.

"'Climate change has already been shown to increase the amounts of rain falling in the most intense events across many parts of the world, and extreme rainfall events like this week's Louisiana storm are expected [to] grow increasingly common in the coming years,' wrote the Weather Underground's Bob Henson and Jeff Masters.

"'Louisiana is always at risk of floods, naturally, but climate change is exacerbating that risk, weighting the dice against us,' Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher at Texas Tech University, told The Washington Post. 'How long will it be until we finally recognize that the dice are loaded?'

"The easiest link between climate change and extreme weather events involves heat waves, a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found. This makes sense: A warming planet overall breaks warm-temperature records more frequently than cold-temperature records and sets the stage for lengthier, or stronger, bouts of extreme heat.

"But one of the other relatively simple links involves rainfall and heavy flooding. 'Heavy rainfall is influenced by a moister atmosphere, which is a relatively direct consequence of human-induced warming, though not as direct as the increase in temperature itself,' the NAS report noted.

"This is because as the atmosphere warms, its ability to retain water vapor increases. Thus, the climate influence on precipitation events runs from tropical cyclones to blizzards, and all of them should be able to produce more precipitation in extreme events than before.

"Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has argued that we should turn the tables and, rather than assuming that a climate link to a given extreme event remains to be proved, simply assume one exists for extreme events driven by thermodynamic factors -- e.g., heat and moisture -- like heat waves and major rain events.

"'Because global warming is real and present, it is not a question as to whether it is playing a role but what that role is,' wrote Trenberth and two colleagues in a 2015 paper."

And our political leaders continue to ignore the crisis and avoid the topic at all costs. We can gasp at the latest goofy remark that escapes The Donald's pursed lips (shut down the Internet to stop ISIS?) or cringe every time Hillary screams into the mic about electing a "You're Hired!" president. But nary a peep about the single most important issue facing us today.

The lives of our children and grandchildren will be forever impacted by the choices we make right now. The Neocons generate a lot of squawk about protecting the little embryos -- frozen or not -- that are threatened by stem cell research or Planned Parenthood ... what are we saving them for if their future is so inconsequential?

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Kathy never expected a career in radio as a talk show producer. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Kathy was completing her nursing degree when in 2001 - in an emergency - she was asked to fill in as the producer of Mike's program. Within a few (more...)
 
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