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All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

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USGS says South Carolina flooding not caused by climate change

Dr. Robert Holmes, USGS National Flood Hazard Coordinator, takes some time to discuss and answer some hot issues related to the flooding in South Carolina.

Is this flooding in South Carolina truly a 1000-year flood?
While this certainly was a catastrophic flood with lots of damage and tragic loss of life, USGS provisional data and preliminary analysis show NO indication that a 1000-year flood discharge occurred at any USGS streamgages. However, based on that analysis, it does appear that the USGS streamgage on the Black River at Kingstree, SC and the one on theSmith Branch at Columbia, SC both measured peak floods in the neighborhood of a 500-year flood. Currently, there appear to be a few more streamgages experiencing a 25-year to 50-year flood, but the majority of USGS streamgages had flood peaks that were less than 10-year floods. USGS will have more accurate estimates of the flood probabilities out in the coming months, as the engineers and scientists in South Carolina take time to do more careful analysis of the statistics.

Why do you think people have been calling it a 1000-year flood?
When USGS uses terminology like “1000-year flood,” it means that, statistically speaking, a flood of that magnitude (or greater) has a 1 in 1000 chance in any given year. In terms of probability, the 1000-year flood has a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. One must keep in mind a 1000-year flood value is a statistical value based on observed data.

Although the USGS streamgage data in South Carolina does not seem to indicate a 1000 year flood, the amount of rainfall that fell over a 2 to 3 day period (greater than 16 to 20 inches in some locations) had, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a statistical probability of occurrence of 0.1% or 1 in 1000 chance. So, rather than someone saying this was a 1000-year flood, it is more accurate to say that “statistically speaking”, the rainfall that fell was a 1000-year rain storm, although it did not result in a 1000-year flood.

How can we have a 1000-year rain that does not result in a 1000-year flood?
It comes down to a number of factors, including the pattern of movement of the rain storm in each particular watershed, the conditions of the soil and plant matter on the ground in the watershed, and the timing of rain storm in one watershed versus other watersheds, among other things. An example would be that ground that is saturated before 1 inch of rain fell would result in more water going into the stream that if the ground was dry and could soak up more of the rain. Also, less water will runoff into streams from 1 inch of rain falling in the summer with the trees full of leaves versus the winter when there are no leaves to intercept the rain. This is all the science of hydrology, which is the study of the movement and distribution of water on the earth. Of course, in South Carolina, many of the watersheds have streams that are regulated by dams.

Is this flood due to climate change?
USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases. Essentially, from USGS long-term streamgage data for sites across the country with no regulation or other changes to the watershed that could influence the streamflow, the data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time.

A much bigger impact on flooding, though, is land use change. Without proper mitigation, urbanization of watersheds increases flooding. Moreover, encroachment into the floodplain by homes and businesses leads to greater economic losses and potential loss of life, with more encroachment leading to greater losses.

http://water.usgs.gov/floods/events/2015/Joaquin/HolmesQA.html

Hey Pete, it is official, it is from the government - global warming aka climate change did not cause flooding to occur in South Carolina.

But all those global warming truthers are claiming global warming caused the flooding. Claiming it so does not make it so. It does make those who claim it so wackos that will believe anything because it fits the politics. Would that be you, Pete? :)
 
The numbers of Hurricanes this year and past years is pretty good evidence that we will have hurricanes next year and the year after and for years and years after that. They follow up the east coast as they have been doing for a long time in the past. That's called in most circles strong evidence and is relatively predictable as a group. One thing is for sure, so far. In spite of so called Man made Climate change its seems to not have effected the hurricanes.

Then of course there is no money to be made from hurricanes that everyone does not know how to do already.
 
The exact track of a hurricane is difficult. Again, here is whats certain, because of documented evidence(not computer models) there will be hurricanes next year. Also the year after and the year after and beyond. The science is in and the track record proves it.
 
Pete, you may live in the 6th most filthiest City in the US for air quality. I got to hand too you your City has great gun laws, resulting in a very low homicide rate. Kudo's to you and all the other citizens

http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/homicide/

Pittsburgh Gun Law

http://ecode360.com/13706204#13707987

Other Filthy aired Cities like Chicago, etc should adopt Pittsburgh laws on guns.

I personally feel there a little strong, but I could live with it.

So once your clean up your air you will be a lot happier. :-)
 
The true nature of "save the planet" electric car owners

SAN FRANCISCO — Of all the states, California has set the most ambitious targets for cutting emissions in coming decades, and an important pillar of its plan to reach those goals is encouraging the spread of electric vehicles.

But the push to make the state greener is creating an unintended side effect: It is making people meaner.

The bad moods stem from the challenges drivers face finding recharging spots for their battery-powered cars. Unlike gas stations, charging stations are not yet in great supply, and that has led to sharp-elbowed competition. Electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another’s cars, trading insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in corporate parking lots. The too-few-outlets problem is a familiar one in crowded cafes and airports, where people want to charge their phones or laptops. But the need can be more acute with cars — will their owners have enough juice to make it home? — and manners often go out the window.

In the moments after Don Han plugged in his Nissan Leaf at a public charging station near his Silicon Valley office one day this summer, he noticed another Leaf pull up as he was walking away. The driver got out and pulled the charger out of Mr. Han’s car and started to plug it into his own. Mr. Han stormed back.

“I said, ‘Hey, buddy, what do you think you’re doing?’ And he said, ‘Well, your car is done charging,’ ” Mr. Han recalled. He told him that was not the case, put the charger back in his own car and left “after saying a couple of curse words, of course.”

Such incidents are not uncommon, according to interviews with drivers and electric vehicle advocates, as well as posts from people sharing frustrations on social media. Tensions over getting a spot are “growing and growing,” said Maureen Blanc, the director of Charge Across Town, a San Francisco nonprofit that works to spread the adoption of electric vehicles. She owns an electric BMW and recently had a testy run-in over a charging station with a Tesla driver.

Right now, there is roughly one public charger for every 10 electric vehicles — about 15,000 in California and 33,000 across the country, according to ChargePoint, one of the biggest charging-station companies. (There are thousands of other, unofficial charging spots that are essentially wall outlets that businesses or homeowners have made available for public plug-in).

Most people charge at home (using an electrical outlet) but also want to use public chargers, in part because the cars have a limited range — typically 80 miles. On top of this “range anxiety,” as it is called, drivers like the idea of getting a free or low-cost charge at a public station.

“Imagine going to a gas station that says, ‘Here’s free gas.’ Who wouldn’t want to muscle in and say, ‘I’ll take some free gas’?”

“Some people say, ‘I just wish I could key their cars,’ ” said Jack Brown, who created the EV Etiquette Survival Packs and a Facebook page devoted to complaining about the interlopers.

The competition has led people to judge one another’s cars and which ones deserve charging priority. Owners of all-electric cars see themselves as most entitled to the chargers, since they have no Plan B. One rung down are “plug-in hybrids,” which use electricity but also can use gas, followed by hybrids, and then two groups for which the owners of pure electric cars reserve particular disdain: gas cars and, perhaps surprisingly, Teslas. (The $100,000 Teslas, as much as three times the cost of other plug-ins, have a range of several hundred miles and so, theoretically, do not need the charge spots.)

Jamie Hull, who drives an electric Fiat, grew apoplectic recently when she discovered herself nearly out of a charge, unable to get home to Palo Alto. She found a charging station, but a Tesla was parked in it and not charging. She ordered a coffee, waited for the driver to return and, when he did, asked why he was taking a spot when he was not charging. She said the man had told her that he was going to run one more errand and walked off.

“I seriously considered keying his car,” she said.

Among its own customers, Tesla has faced similar issues. In fact, some Tesla drivers reported having received a letter in August from the company saying that they were overusing its network of superfast charging stations — meant to aid long-distance travel — and that they should unplug once charged.

Ms. Hull, an executive at Evernote, a software company where electric vehicles outnumber chargers 60 to 12, the scramble for chargers leads to curious behavior. The company does have a sign-up sheet for reserving charging time. But it is not uncommon for people to leave their cars too long, or for members of the public to take the spots or even, Ms. Hull said, for people to work outside deals.

To Ms. Hull, the culture stems in part from the way electric car owners have grown used to perks, like getting state and federal subsidies for buying green cars, or permission to use the car pool lane. So when it comes to unplugging someone, well, they feel deserving. “They’re not bad people, necessarily,” she said. “They may have some amount of entitlement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/s..._th_20151011&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50329110

A new entitlement class of people who are mean and demand their perks for being green. Come to California to compete for that free electric car charging station and save the planet while you charge your electric car. Show people your smugness. Anyone depriving you of your entitled perk deserves your wrath.
 
Judges plan to outlaw climate change 'denial’

A semi-secret, international conference of top judges proposed to make illegal any opinion that contradicted climate change

Including senior judges and lawyers from across the world, the three-day conference on “Climate Change and the Law” was staged in London’s Supreme Court. It was funded, inter alia, by the Supreme Court itself, the UK government and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

As one of the two UN sponsors of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP has been one of the main drivers of alarm over global warming for 40 years. The organiser and chairman of the conference was the Supreme Court judge Lord Carnwath, a fervent believer in man-made climate change, who has worked with the Prince of Wales for more than 20 years, and with UNEP since 2002.

The purpose of this strange get-together was outlined in a keynote speech (visible on YouTube) by Philippe Sands, a QC from Cherie Blair’s Matrix Chambers and professor of law at University College, London. Since it is now unlikely that the world will agree in Paris to a legally binding treaty to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees C from pre-industrial levels, his theme was that it is now time for the courts to step in, to enforce this as worldwide law.

Although his audience, Sands said, would agree that the scientific evidence for man-made climate change was “overwhelming”, there were still “scientifically qualified, knowledgeable and influential individuals” continuing to deny “the warming of the atmosphere, the melting of the ice and the rising of the seas”, and that this is all due to our emissions of CO2. The world’s courts, led by the International Court of Justice, said Sands, could play a vital role “in finally scotching these claims”.

“The most important thing the courts could do,” he said, was to hold a top-level “finding of fact”, to settle these “scientific disputes” once and for all: so that it could then be made illegal for any government, corporation (or presumably individual scientist) ever to question the agreed “science” again. Furthermore, he went on, once “the scientific evidence” thus has the force of binding international law, it could be used to compel all governments to make “the emissions reductions that are needed”, including the phasing out of fossil fuels, to halt global warming in its tracks.

The fact that it could be seriously proposed in the highest courtroom in the land that the law should now be used to suppress any further debate on what has become one of the most contentious issues in the history of science (greeted with applause from the distinguished legal audience) speaks volumes about the curious psychological state to which the great global warming scare has reduced so many of the prominent figures who today exercise power and influence over the life of our Western societies.

For perspective, we need only think of the likely responses to all this claptrap by China and India (which has just announced that it intends to triple its CO2 emissions by 2030). Not only have they already kicked into touch any chance of a “binding climate treaty” in December. At the thought of these self-important lawyers trying to force them to comply by international law, they will merely respond with inscrutable smiles, as they continue to rely on fossil fuels to power what will soon be the two largest economies in the world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11924776/Judges-plan-to-outlaw-climate-change-denial.html

Not unlike the radicals here urging the president to use the RICO law to crush any dissent or claim by science that contradicts the global warming orthodoxy, the global warming truthers are setting up international law to crush any evidence contrary to the official statement of fact.

That's how the few justify controlling the many. It is not about science because science has been bought, corrupted by the system that controls. The motto of the control system is a lie is every bit as good as the truth when people believe it.
 
If enough of us decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one
Naomi Klein
 
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