Local view: Duluth needs a long-term strategy to deal with effects of climate change
July 10, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Celebrated American author Toni Morrison has talked about past Mississippi River flooding not as flooding but as the river’s way of “remembering.”
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Overreact much? It’s not like the entire city was destroyed. Some streets need to be repaired. And anybody in Duluth who can’t find access to nature within walking distance of wherever they might be isn’t trying very hard. I figured a storm like this one would bring the environmental alarmists out in droves, but please…let’s not get carried away.
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They’re floods. They happen. As far as Duluth goes, it wasn’t a matter of Dear Mother, it was a matter of crappy culverts & gravity.
Instead of long term solutions for climate change, how about bigger/better culverts, have a better plan for our underground creeks (such as the one under Whole Foods) and realize sometimes that crap happens?
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I don’t think we have enough data to say the flood was caused by global warming. Maybe it had a part in it. We have only recorded our weather data for maybe 120-130 years? I’m sure we have had even larger floods if you could go back a few hundred years. Or try a few thousand years. We didn’t do too bad in Duluth as far as floods go. Yes, some lost everything they had. We have some houses that probably shouldn’t have been built in flood prone areas. You have some utility and storm water systems that are over 100 years old. Is this a global warming problem or a city planning and crumbling utility problem?
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We could go back and study how the Romans handled the heat. Tree ring analysis shows it was warmer 2000 years ago.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171973/Tree-ring-study-proves-climate-WARMER-Roman-Medieval-times-modern-industrial-age.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
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Source: Peer Reviewed Journal Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html
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Make that FIVE sages, Ranger. People blame everything on global warming. If you were to look at the data from 50 to 80 years ago, there were lots of big storms, tornados, floods, and droughts. It’s just that today we have alarmists who seem to blame any “catastrophy” on global warming. Oh, and don’t forget, evil mankind is responsible! Really……
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The last thing we need to have in Duluth is a strategy on the effects of climate change. You can argue one way or another if global warming is another Y2K or if its real. It might be something worth looking into If we were London or Miami or New Orleans. When look inside the university system you have people who have a lack of common sense and real world experience. This is where this idea originated from.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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For the sake of argument, let’s assume it is real. How do you propose we stop it? The amount of CO2 we produce is so insignificant that we could (if we could) stop producing it and still not impact what the Earth’s orbit and the Sun’s cycle do to our temperatures. At least 4 times in our written history we’ve experienced these rather dramatic warming/cooling cycles. Only in our most recent one has CO2 allegedly been the cause. If it didn’t cause the previous three, what makes the alarmists so sure that we caused the forth? No sane or intelligent person can state with any certainty that our current temperature fluctuations are anything but part of the normal cycle of things. Look at the dust bowl of the 1930′s. Look at the drop in temps during the ’40′s. Even with all the industry and war and all the burning of those nasty fossil fuels, (not to mention all those munitions) we still had cooling. How and why did that happen if we are the cause of the warming?
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Methane caused 3 of the 5 mass extinctions. The 4th was the dinosaur/meteorite collision 65 million yrs. ago. We are in the 5th mass extinction this time due to CO2 but that will result in the release of all the frozen methane in the Arctic tundra & Arctic Ocean floor meaning methane is usually the cause of extinctions. It is 10 times more potent than CO2. See Peter Ward’s work @ the U. of Wash. – Seattle.
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It’s all stages people!! You can’t take a snapshot of the earth’s history and say that the planet is doomed. Looking at 25 years of a planet’s 4.5 billion year existence is bad science and bad common sense.
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Ah yes, the big boogy man global warming! People really need to get off this global warming thing, its junk science. Right where Duluth sits today 20 thousand years ago there was a sheet of ice 2 miles thick. Then it melted yet there were not billions of human and millions of cars and factories and homes. It is called an ice age and prior to the last ice age the earths surface had been mostly vegetated by forest and grasslands. The north pole region of the world was lush grasslands.
The earth is still warming from the last ice age and in time there will be no ice caps. This entire global warming is a fabrication by certain people for the purpose of wealth. Duluth is an old city and a lot of the infrastructure needs up dating and this is no secret. Do we need green areas to prevent flooding, yes we do. Just don’t throw global warming in the mix to scare people into doing something.
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It rains in one place and it’s caused by global warming. A drought in the next is caused by global warming. Severe winter in Europe last year? Yup, you guessed it, it’s all climate change. Weather, by definition is not static. It’s cyclical. Mr Beery, you know this, but it doesn’t fit into your agenda. Maybe you’re spending too much time with Jay Austin and company. Any REAL scientist doesn’t dismiss data not in lockstep with his predetermined agenda. Pretenders, on the other hand……………
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This is my contention. This “issue” is more about politics then it is about science,.
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The article is real vague on what they think needs to happen. What kind of strategy do they think we need? Yes, some parts of our stormwater system are over 100 years old. I’m guessing when the city rebuilds a steet they upgrade the stormwater system anyway. Most of the parking areas at the mall already have improved stormwater retention systems. Maybe some houses that were flooded need to be permanently removed. Why rebuild in an area prone to flooding? These are all things that are looked at anyway. It comes down to common sense. Look at the library over at UWS. Some administrator decided when renovating the library that the book collection should go in the basement. Is it the fault of global warming that the collection was lost due to the flood? Or a lack of common sense by someone in charge? I mean….we have had floods as long as rain has fallen from the sky.
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General consensus in the “room” is very evidently biased against global warming. So, let’s take the “big question” out of this and simply stop paving big parking lots. You can still have shopping without them! Solution: integrated parking garages, reduce the # of parking bays, design permeable surface parking lots, walk or take the bus. Obviously, if you’re going to Home Depot for 2″x4″s you’re not going to walk but don’t take the common sense out of my argument.
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How can one be biased against what doesn’t exist? There is no evidence to show that man’s activities have done anything to change global temperatures. Only speculation backed by a political agenda and the power and money that the alarmists know will follow it. Who caused the previous 4 warming/cooling cycles experienced since Christ’s birth? Why, after several dry scorching years of the dust bowl did temperatures fall and stay down, despite the huge increase in fossil fuel emissions associated with the war and the war effort? Any honest person would admit that there isn’t a link between human caused emissions and temperatures.
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Humans produce huge amounts of CO2 each day in comparison to volcanoes & it has been that way for 300 yrs. Think of each city as a continuous volcano lasting for 200 + yrs. There is only the 35,000 ‘(7 mi.) of troposphere to absorb that CO2 & it has filled (400 ppm) to the point of causing the climate to change.
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Whether or not you believe in a man made global warming, there seems to be a consensus that the climate is changing as it always does. If so it makes sense to take into account any data showing heavier storms and design accordingly.
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I don’t know why people insist on bashing someone who believes in a theory that has yet to be proven false. Some people act like believing that we might have an influence on the climate of our planet is akin to believing in the Easter Bunny.
The point of this article was not to say “climate change is an absolute fact”. It was to say that we should take a look at history, and try to use the knowledge we have at hand to reduce future damage from floods or other weather anomalies.
But, like all Area Voices discussions, it has boiled down to a left vs right argument.
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There is a marked difference between simply believing in Anthropogenic Global Warming, and forcing others to act on your beliefs. AGW has become the religion of the left. Imagine if you were forced to adhere, against your will, to Evangelical Christian beliefs, or those of militant Islam? We’d never hear the end of it. But you want us to fund a war against warming that you can’t show we even caused? AGW is not a proven fact. Quite the contrary. There is more evidence refuting the theory than supporting it. But when you have the media as your mouthpiece, you’re able to suppress the truth.
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Dorkus~ “But, like all Area Voices discussions, it has boiled down to a left vs right argument.”
That’s because all the deniers that we’re polluting our air and water think anything to do with NOT polluting the air and water we need to survive is some liberal leftist commie subversive plot. Kinda makes one wonder how low an IQ one has to have to not see we’re polluting the planet.
On other hand, 43% of our air and water contamination from mercury in the country is created by coal generation plants and it’s known to create neurological damages to unborn children preventing their brains from developing properly. We’re surrounded by coal generation plants, it’s coal country…..this may explain a lot of what see posted here. There are a lot here that just ain’t right in the head..LOL.
Frankly, the whole climate change/weather change argument is like a big misdirect with us divided and arguing over whether is happening or not. Fact is we are polluting our air and water. Fact is we need both to survive and there is only a finite limited supply of both. Fact is instead of taking a united stand against polluting more which should only require a smidgen of common sense, we’re arguing with each other about whether is impacting the weather when beyond dispute, we’re impacting our environment.
100 years from now folks will look back on those denying we’re negatively impacting our environment the same way we look at those that argued vehemently that the world was flat.
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“On other hand, 43% of our air and water contamination from mercury in the country is created by coal generation plants and it’s known to create neurological damages to unborn children preventing their brains from developing properly. ”
I guess this would then explain Obama’s election to President, eh?
I haven’t seen a single post where a conservative states that we aren’t or haven’t polluted our environment. For you to equate CO2 emissions with mercury is ridiculously over reaching. And to claim that CO2 is the cause of AGW is equally ridiculous, especially when you intentionally ignore all the previous warming cycles in our written history. I suppose you accept as gospel Obama’s claim that republicans all want dirty air, polluted waters, and to throw grandma from a cliff, too. I can’t decide if you are intentionally dishonest, willfully ignorant, deluded, or simply deceived in your representation of AGW. Regardless of your motive/reasoning, you have yet to respond to the simplest of queries concerning our past warming events and who/what caused them. If man didn’t cause the preceding events, what twist of logic leads you to believe we caused our current one. I realize we’re barking up a tree in expecting an answer, but for all your bluster, aren’t we entitled to one reasoned reply? If you can’t bring yourself to admit that you don’t have the answer, why should we believe anything you say? Without credible answers, you are nothing.
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To Hugh~~
WTH????? Most of your post made no sense.
You~”For you to equate CO2 emissions with mercury is ridiculously over reaching.”
Me~ I never did equate CO2 with mercury. I equated mercury pollution which is in the air as well as water with coal generation plants. That’s not over reaching, that’s a fact that 43% of our mercury contamination comes from coal generation plants.
You~ “And to claim that CO2 is the cause of AGW is equally ridiculous, especially when you intentionally ignore all the previous warming cycles in our written history.”
Me- AGAIN, since I DID NOT bring up CO2, the only thing that’s ridiculous is your assertion that I did. I actually said that the whole argument of climate change was absurd because it sucks us all into a ridiculous argument of whether we’re causing it or not while ignoring the fact we are polluting our air and water. I didn’t intentionally ignore the past warming cycles in our history, I intentionally was ignoring being sucked into the silly argument over climate change. It’s silly because you have to be pretty stupid to not realize we’re harming and polluting our air and water. Who cares whether it’s impacting our climates or not if future generations can’t survive because not enough clean air and water to sustain them. The absurdity to me of the conservatives and deniers argument fighting this equates to saying NO, we don’t need to pollute less. That’s what it really boils down to and one has to be pretty dull witted to take that side of argument. For me there is no argument, we do need to pollute less and be better stewards and baffled why anyone would have a hissy fit at the very suggestion that we maybe need to pay attention and pollute less.
You~”Regardless of your motive/reasoning, you have yet to respond to the simplest of queries concerning our past warming events and who/what caused them”
Me- Read my prior response in this post. And the post you are responding to of mine was only post in this thread prior to this one, so there have been NO simplest of queries for me by you or anyone else to respond to, there have been no questions asked except this totally disconnected out in left field rambling of yours.
You~ “I realize we’re barking up a tree in expecting an answer, but for all your bluster, aren’t we entitled to one reasoned reply? ”
Me~ And you’re getting it despite all your bluster and fabricated nonsense about what I said and attacking me for not responding when this your only response to me.
You~ “If you can’t bring yourself to admit that you don’t have the answer, why should we believe anything you say? Without credible answers, you are nothing.”
Me~ So you blast me for convo never had, accuse me of not answering questions never asked, blast me for my position on climate change when said was stupid argument and now are answering for me the question never asked and using it to take cheap shot at my credibility then drawing conclusion my answers aren’t credible and I’m nothing? Typical conservative response btw, when have not a clue what talking about, attack the other person and their credibility.
I jokingly said that the mercury pollution around here has maybe adled a few based on the posts here by conservatives and the deniers. Your post makes me think actually there’s some truth in what I said.
“Human kind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” Chief Seattle, 1854
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Just as long as those bureaucrats don’t develop a strategy for the effects of living past global peak oil production. That might actually be useful down the road!! And heaven forbid…
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It sure would be terrible if global warming was a hoax, and we ended up reducing polution for nothing.
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To Vune~…and we have a..BINGO!
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