Midwest Storms - Is Everyone OK?

[tomturbomatic]

The sad thing is that the greed of the oil, coal and auto interests in this country and those that feed off of them has prevented any meaningful leadership in R&D for alternative energy sources for more than 3 decades. I remember the terse report on an experiment with geo-thermal energy said something about the sediment rich water clogged the pipes making it an impractical source of energy. The joke used to be: Why aren't we using more solar power? Because the oil companies don't own the sun or haven't figured out how to bill for sunlight. We will pay for this. As the African proverb goes, "When elephants battle, it's the grass that suffers." In 1969 or thereabouts, the Smithsonian Magazine had an article about the limited supply of fossil fuels and what we needed to do to prepare for the time when they would be in short supply and cost more than we could imagine. Nobody wants to hear about that. Image what a curse it would have been to be shown something from the future like AIDS or the Holocaust and not only not have anyone listen to you, but to have them shun you or threaten you with imprisonment if you did not stop making a pest of yourself and upsetting people.

On a spring afternoon in 1955, the high school I was to eventually attend burned. I was a little kid not yet 5 standing in the street watching the smoke far away, not knowing what was burning. Years later, one of my best friends told me about that day. The motion picture projectors had been blowing fuses all day. After school was out, this young student who had a reputation as sort of a flake and a teller of tales came running to my friend who was head of the HomeEc Department yelling that she had to get out of the building because the school was on fire. She tried to shush him but he would not be silenced and begged her to go with him to see it because no one would believe him. She agreed after assuring him he would be in big trouble if he was not telling the truth. He took her to a door of the gym and when he opened it, one whole wall was was in flames. People don't want to hear about the unthinkable or even the inconvenient or unpleasant.

 

[oxydolfan1]

Climate change could be a contributing factor for what we have been seeing, but the technology exists for weather manipulation through devices like ionospheric heaters, and, that, to me, would seem to be a more rational reason for such remarkable changes, occurring at such an amazing speed.

 

[panthera]

Ionospheric heaters?!!!

OK, Toto - I <font color="red">know<font color="000000"> we aren't in Kansas any more.
Anyone who seriously believes that is spending way too much time reading check-out tabloids or is channeling Trick Dicky.
Or both.

But, gosh - anybody mind if I submit it as a plot for the next James Bond?
I know exactly who could play the Bond boy, the mad scientist and the evil villain.

 

[tolivac]

Ionosheric heating-its been tried-but man just can't generate enough power to do this-at best only like a something like a tenth of a degree in a small area over Alaska-the HAARP experiment-High Altitude Aurora Radiation Project.It involves broadcasting SW energy(like what we use at VOA site for SW broadcasting)straight up into the atmoshpere over Alaska.the HAARP site can generate up to 6MW of SW energy-about what our site can generate if all transmitters here were running at full power-all at the same time.Continental electronics built the transmitters used in the HAARP research project.We use some Continental transmitters here.Its an interesting project-not the sinister thing some report it to be.The plant has a radar system that monitors the airspace over the site-beleive its near Mt Sanford Alaska.The airspace is restricted there-there is enough energy where it could affect an airplanes engine control systems or navigation-the Radar system monitors the airspace whenever their transmitters are on-if a plane strays into the space-the transmitters are shut down immediately and the operators are alerted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP

 

[panthera]

Yeah,

The burning water problem is similar - we can't get as much energy out (yet) as we put in.
Same with "cold fusion". I am willing to accept the potential, since I don't have the maths or brains to judge for myself. But so far, all these schemes exceed our technical and manufacturing abilities by a wide margin.
It would be easier to release massive amounts of CO² into the atmosphere then to build ionospheric heaters which could account for even a small percentage of what's going on.
I don't doubt that we will solve these things eventually, or find better solutions...but when I read about these conspiracies, it just makes we want to roll on the floor and laugh...then cry and weep.
Sheesh, somebody's tin-foil hat is on way too tight.

 

[tolivac]

Here is the link to the actual HAARP website.No-you won't need your tinfoil cap.I am afraid the earths atmosphere is so massive even Man really can't effect it as some beleive---"Gullible warming"We are in a 10,050 year cycle-enjoy it won't happen again for another 10,000 years.The power output of the HAARP site is really 3.6MW-I got it wrong.About the power of one of VOA's transmitter sites.The big difference is the HAARP transmitter site aims straight upward wereas VOA does not.As their website points out-other research projects go one there.

http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/

 

[oxydolfan1]

Well, there are slow learners who chose to believe the emerging global warming industry, where LOADS of money can be made off an irrational, all-encompassing fear of ONE scientific aspect can be attributed to everything from escalating fuel prices to, uh, the length of time it takes to fry one's Bratkartoffeln up...

I prefer to accept the fact that there ARE aspects to science, industry, emerging technologies, and more affordable ways to affect geopolitics and contemporary warfare that are beyond my ability to fully comprehend, without ruling out that they necessarily exist altogether.

And that would be the difference between those of us who truly are interested in the world, and the future, and those who simply need yet another excuse to "weep".

Thank you, tolivac, for the excellent overview.

 

[panthera]

When you are in a hole,

Stop digging!

At this stage in our scientific progress, we can not yet make conclusively prove nor yet disprove entirely the extent to which our activities contribute to climate warming.

Nor is it entirely possible to predict the warming/cooling cycles beyond fairly rough estimates on a planet which is subject to Draysonian shifts (like Terra, lucky us).

The most we can do is to look at the evidence from the past, apply our best statistical tools to it, compare it to the situation in the present era and make projections about what we think might happen in the near future.

Regardless of the accuracy of such projections, regardless of the potential for man to influence the atmosphere, there is tremendous unity among scientists competent in these endeavors that our biosphere is warming and will most likely continue to do so over the next years.

It is up to us to decide what we want to do with this information. When I first heard that, for some reason, people who kept cats and bathed regularly suffered less from the black plague, I decided to keep cats, buy meself a good vacuum cleaner and up my baths from once a year to weekly.
Other folks decided to kill all the cats, persecute the folks taking all those baths and stone the door-to-door Kirby salesman...hanging his severed head on the city gate next to that of Louis Pasteur, Galileo and Columbus.

Sorry if my dates may be a bit confused there, when reflecting on one's middle-age, one may, at times, get the time sequences a bit mixed up.

Anyway you cut it, wasting our last reserves of fossil fuel is foolish. Anticipating an exclusively market driven solution to the problem will fix things may sound good on paper, but effectively, it will destroy the middle class - the back-bone of that capitalism I am rather fond of. I don't know what we can do, I don't know what we need to do to cope with a changing climate. I do know that when things are warming up, it doesn't make sense to contribute to the heat load.

 

[rapunzel]

Panthera,

Based on my personal observations climate change is very much an (upper) middle-class driven initiative. It has everything to do with resource and wealth re-distribution and very little with the atmosphere. You are right though, it is about squeezing average and low-income households to breaking point, globally. Current world energy and food costs are impacted by the politics that flow from this issue amongst other things.

If this issue were truly driven by genuine and serious science we would have real and protracted debate about it. As it currently stands though, it is nothing more than shrill propaganda, scaremongering and (very successful) social engineering on a grand scale. Considering the lack of good quality science and debate, I wager that a few years from now climate change/ global warming will go into the annals of history as a grand hoax. BTW, science has clearly established that climate has never been a constant and significant changes have occurred over very small time-frames pre-industrialization. I find statements such as 'we can stop/reverse climate change' highly amusing and indicative of the ignorance and disingenuousness of climate change advocates.

Renewables are expensive and don't deliver the goods that will serve humanity with a better and egalitarian future. A case in point are hybrids, which deliver some kind of net energy benefit in city traffic, but are no more efficient than an ordinary petrol engine on the freeway. Taking into account the entire life-cycle (from production, use to the disposal)of hybrids and their higher cost, they are actually a very poor choice. There are diesel cars that are 30% cheaper, kinder to the environment and hip pocket. Studies have shown that, even with current petrol prices, it will take consumers approximately 30 years to recoup the extra cost of their hybrid purchase through petrol savings. In real terms the only positive is a warm and fuzzy feeling if one chooses not to look at the bigger picture.

Currently photovoltaic power generation is less than 50% efficient, when compared to electricity generated from fossil fuels and very much more expensive. If we were to put installations in place on a scale required to meet modern energy demands, the net outcome would be financial and environmental ruin. In the future things may very well change, but this is how it stands at the moment.

I still think that clean coal and carbon sequestering are very real and sensible options. The emerging economies will continue to use cheap coal as their primary source for energy generation, regardless of the environmental sentiments of the West. If we keep developing improved technologies for conventional fuels, not only can we keep using our own resources, but also sell them.

Energy consumption will only increase, unless we either experience a significant reduction in the world's population, some other cataclysmic or social event that throws us back to pre-industrialization. I see no merit in the current policy directions that are being formulated by industrialized nations. Carbon trading and the Kyoto protocol are a scams that cut down more trees to create imaginary value from thin air without any tangible environmental positives. These types of initiatives are designed to inveigle, obfuscate and fleece the general public.

Anyway, enough of that for now.

BTW, going back to the original topic of this post - tornadoes do occur in Germany and other parts of the world with regularity. Did you know that in India and Bangladesh more people are killed by tornadoes every year than in the US?

When I lived in the mid-western US many years ago, I experienced lots of spectacular thunderstorms, but never once a tornado. Though, in the early seventies our car got trashed by a tornado that blew through my home town of Kiel, Germany. Mum and I had gone to Hertie for some shopping and we'd parked our car opposite by the rail station, which also happened to be in the path of that tornado. We didn't know what had happened until we got outside well after the event - which is a credit to German building codes. To say the least, the place looked as if a bomb had been dropped right in the middle of the car park and our car was totalled.

Some climatologists are saying that global warming may actually reduce future tornadic and hurricane events, due to reduced temperature differences in the troposphere. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Personally, I am of the opinion that US building codes do not offer adequate protection from severe weather events.

 

[panthera]

Rapunzel,

Thank you for such a reasoned and well thought out analysis. I don't know what the ultimate consequences of our actions will be.
Anyone who thinks of climate as a constant need only think about the origin of "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old" to consider just how very short a time span lies between the last time our current ice-age woke up a bit and our current moment.

That said, we have to pay attention to economic realities. Yes, our fossil fuel resources will last well into the 22nd century, even exploiting them at our current rate. But the price will continue to rise, the competition between these fossil resources as "income" (fuel) and "capitol" (plastics, foods, fertilizers) will sharpen.

If we permit the market to balance these demands on its own, there is no disagreement that the balance will be achieved by raising the price continuously and rapidly until supply and demand are back in alignment. Unfortunately, that price point will mandate the end of our middle-class driven capitalist economies.

I won't touch on the environment - except to say that there are no practical sequestration programs up and running on a sufficiently large scale to help...and no evidence that any will be viable soon. Be groovy if we found some...just as an example, bamboo sequesters 70% more carbon due to its enormous growth cycle than does a white oak.

Sure, nuclear energy, solar energy, wave energy, wind energy, etc. are not yet as efficient as fossil fuels. Na und? Actually, I recall reading recently that at the current price per kwH in Germany, solar voltaic panels have now achied parity when considering all aspects - manufacture to Abriß of the panels, digging out the coal to the power point at the users home. Nothing comes close to gasoline for cars and I am still skeptical as to whether the lithium-ion batteries which Toyota is bringing in to use will be the breakthrough they promise.

But: Why wait until people are starving in the streets, gasoline costs more than people can afford to pay (I mean really, not the perceived pain). Why be wasteful of a limited resource and create pollution just because we don't yet know with 100% certainty whether we are contributing to global warming or not? Even if we aren't, wastefulness offends my sensibilities...

Time will show whether this was really just a passing fad or not. The last time commerce broke down in our culture, it took nearly 800 years to get things more or less back up and running again...I'd rather err on the side of caution than not.

Tornadoes in Hamburg as opposed to waterspouts are not a common phenomena, although more common than many Germans believe. We have severe weather here in Munich, too with windstorms which defy belief. It's just that things have been pretty decent the last few decades and even historically normal weather for central Europe is far harsher than we have come to think it is. Americans don't build like we do, that is true. But then, we don't build anymore like we think we do - I have some acquaintances who inspect new construction for the subways here and their complaints aren't just the usual moan-piss-whine stuff, they are finding serious problems, stuff we used to pretend only happened in the US.

 

[dalangdon]

again with the storms....

The Omaha area got hit again tonight, and a Boy Scout camp in NW Iowa got wiped out, with fatalities. Eastern Iowa is experiencing terrible floods (Cadman, Swestoyz et al, let us know how you're doing. Hope you're keeping dry) Wisconsin and Indiana are a mess. Crops are flooded.

Here it's just cold and rainy. More like March than June. Yesterday there was a snow advisory for the Cascades.

 

[gansky1]

We're all ok here but others are not so lucky. Four fatalities and forty-plus injured at the Boy Scout camp over in Iowa, a terrible tragedy for the families for sure, I can't imagine that kind of horror.

Word is, we'll be in this stormy pattern a little while longer, aside from the threat of winds & tornado, the flooding will be a major concern in coming weeks. The ground is saturated and there is no place for the water to go except into the rivers and creeks which are already high.

 

[swestoyz]

Disaster

My, oh my - has this been an amazing turn of events here in eastern Iowa over the last two weeks.

A supervisor here at work had the tornado hit her house over Memorial day - and yesterday was evactuated by the National Guard (by boat) from her home. Numerous employees on my teams have either completely lost their homes in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area, or have taken on a considerable amount of water.

Thankfully my house in Waterloo is safe from the floods - no worries there. My folks live in a little town south of Waterloo. I take this road everyday to work - US Highway 218. Alternate routes are either gravel roads or boat.

I know Cory has some pretty amazing photos - here are a few.

Ben

 

[swestoyz]

Here is a shot of a little town called Waverly - about 20 minutes north of Waterloo/Cedar Falls along the Cedar River. You'll notice the dry spot of road - that is the bridge that normally crosses the river without worry. A co-worker and an aunt and uncle on my father's side lost their homes not far from the river in Waverly as well.

We need to keep our fingers crossed that the efforts put into place already by the numerous volunteers and local officials hold - even with the current river level falling. There is only one other place for this to go - the Mississippi.

Ben

 

[rapunzel]

Ben,

Waverly looks like a beautiful little place, but what a mess. How flood prone is that area? It looks as if the town was built right in the middle of a flood plain without levies or other kinds of protection.

Truly sorry to hear that so many people close to you have lost their possessions. Floods such as this one can permanently destroy small communities like Waverly. From my understanding insurance companies don't even cover these types of weather events, which means that a lot of folk there will have to start from scratch. It is a very sad situation.

I reckon in places like this people should have built their homes on stilts, at least one full storey high and even higher the closer they are to the river.

Here in Australia we get weather extremes like this all the time. In many parts it is a constant cycle of droughts and floods, where rivers run dry for years on end. Then, within a few hours, whole communties get washed away and they may not even get to see any rain, because it gets dumped miles upriver. I guess such are the vagaries of mother nature.

Take care and stay safe.

 

[geoffdelp]

Thank goodness everyone seems to be OK! I've been wondering how Greg and Ben fared after watching CNN and the Weather Channel last night; some pretty rough stuff.

Today is a beautiful day in Central Minnesota. We've had temps in the mid 70's and sun all day; too bad we had to work!

Ben ... are you staying in Waterloo until the mess is over?

Take care!!

 

[cadman]

Hey Rapunzel, for the most part Waverly is well above the flood plain, only the historical businesses near the dam ever suffer water damage (Flood of '93 and '99 come to mind). Many who've lived there their entire lives have never seen flooding like this, that's how out of control the situation is. I just heard today the railroad bridge in Cedar Rapids that has stood through all matter of storm since 1903 was washed away, railroad cars and all! CR, Cedar Falls and Waterloo are all under full lock down by the national guard with 9PM to 5AM patrolled curfews. You may have seen reporting from Cedar Falls on the Today Show. Sure, you hear about flooding, but this is approaching '500 year' stuff. Crazy-