Stray Thoughts as Montreal Loses Power to Irene

My sub-Arctic hometown took some damage from my wife's tropical storm namesake. Sort of odd from my point of view but probably not worth your attention. However, I did think a conversation from the comments to that report was worth noting:

What sickens me is how every time there is a storm thousands (in the U.S. MILLIONS) go without power because stupid utility companies hang wires on poles. Hello people...wires on poles are NOT weatherproof, haven't you noticed by now?

B.C. is full of trees, as is Québec and every storm brings tree branches (or ice) taking power lines out. Canadians are suckers to put up with this nonsense in a climate like ours, yet they just string up more wires and down they come again next storm.

For your information, Europeans put their utility power lines underground, and have been doing so since electrical power became available in Victorian times, but Canada continues to copy the U.S. and other third world Latin American countries in trying to "make do" with wires on poles.

When are we going to say "enough is enough" and force these power companies to start burying wires? How many deaths and blacked out neighbourhoods are acceptable to power companies before they start doing something? How come Europe can do it and we can't?"

******

You're right.

We just had our roads torn up for a whole summer in my neighbourhood and they wouldn't bury the lines. Lines, I might add, that have shredded insulation covers that are rotting and falling onto the sidewalks because they are very OLD.

Why? Because Bell and Hydro didn't want to pay for it. Yet they come twice a year with a crew of at least two guys to trim the trees all along the street. Every year. I wonder how much that costs.

And we were an area hit hard by the ice storm years back.

Par for the course for corporations as well as governments.

It's not only stupid and dangerous, it's ugly and demoralizing. Why do we do this?

I think it's because of the constant barrage of propaganda in North America that the collective will is powerless to change anything. (Anything set up by the collective will in the past is treated as if it were mysteriously handed down from heaven as if on stone tablets.)

Of course, this idea is spreading in Europe as well. It seems to be leaving them in something of a quandary. If worse comes to worst and economic havoc ensues, in America Obama will be blamed for it, of course.

Austin Plugged by a 44.

Austin got plugged by a 44 today. Celsius that is. Hottest damn day of my life. And tied for the hottest ever in Austin. But apparently they didn't cancel the hot sauce festival in Waterloo Park.

Here are a couple of tastes of Texas shotgun lyrics for Steve Bloom, who picked up on the Texas resonances of the number.





And though it looks like hell warmed over around here these days, there's this:

A concern

Quoth NOAA:

MORE SO THAN WITH MOST STORMS...THE WINDS WITH IRENE INCREASE

SHARPLY WITH HEIGHT ABOVE THE SURFACE.  AS IRENE MOVES THROUGH

AREAS WITH HIGH-RISE STRUCTURES...THESE BUILDINGS COULD EXPERIENCE

WINDS SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN THE SURFACE WINDS.  WINDS AT THE

30-STORY LEVEL WILL LIKELY BE 20 PERCENT HIGHER THAN AT THE SURFACE

...AND WINDS 80-100 STORIES UP COULD BE ABOUT 30 PERCENT HIGHER

THAN AT THE SURFACE.

OK, that's bad enough because power goes as the square of velocity (and damage as the cube, or something like that).

But as I ponder it this seems even scarier than that. If the storm is still symmetrical when it hits Manhattan, I could imagine that there could be enough tall structures to set up turbulence that could mix momentum back downward. Is this crazy? Suppose a sustained 60 mph wind over Manhattan heading north to south. It hits midtown hurricane force winds at 30 stories start mixing up with all the artificial canyons and crevasses and mix down?

What are the maximum sustained winds independent of altitude? How high up are they?

Will the streets of Manhattan be covered in glass tomorrow? Are highrise buildings unsafe under these conditions?

I hope not. I love New York. But I'm not sure this situation has any precedent.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

OK, OK, it's NOT a climate change hurricane. Still...

(click image to unblur)

Thanks to Joe Romm

Thanks to Joe Romm for displaying my schematic of the distribution of informed opinion from the podium at the Schneider symposium during his excellent (scary) talk.



I can't repay the favor in any comparable proportion but let me at least display my favorite slide from his talk.

We need to talk about what the infamous "deficit model" means. Does it mean there's not enough science for people to act? If it does, I agree with the critics. We don't need more journal publications, more text, more explanations, per se.

Does the "deficit model" mean that people don't understand the science well enough to make decisions? If it does, then hell yes. I support the deficit model that says, obviously people don't get it.

So we need to talk about the science. Not about peak oil. Not about solar power. About climate. About ocean acidification. About how uncertainty is not your friend.

Let's talk about science to the people who need to hear it. And if and when they don't hear us, (and many of them won't) let's do it again.

Anything less amounts to holding the world and its future in contempt. Science is about the best evidence about the truth. Politics and journalism are about winning and losing. Alliances and rivalries make sense. But about the emergence of truth there should be no rivalry. Science can hold us together and move us forward. Contention is necessary, but contention is only useful when it is based on a shared respect for truth among the contenders.

Molly and Steve

Now it's up to us.

Uncertainty, Uncertainty, Uncertainty

It's peculiar that Judith Curry is criticizing the IPCC and climate community for understressing uncertainty. It's something one can imagine from the Wattses and McIntyres with their narrow focus on data, but it's incomprehensible from a member of the community.

It's hard to avoid this thought popping up as I watch the Schneider Symposium; probably over half the speakers have talked at length about uncertainty, and how to treat it in interfacing with the public and the policy sector. This includes a few high level IPCC muckety-muck types.

An interesting aspect that several have agreed upon is that the word "uncertainty" carries unfortunate semiotics; the public perceives "uncertainty" as meaning "confusion". A comment from the audience, after much talk about how to communicate the range of plausible outcomes, noted that the new draft AMS statement on climate change eschews the word "uncertainty" entirely, even though the prior statement used it many times. I was astonished to hear this greeted by general applause and enthusiasm!

I heard one speaker suggest turning it upside-down and talking about "certainty" as a quantitative measure, which makes little sense. The right word to use is "confidence", which in fact means exactly the same thing as "uncertainty" technically, despite appearing as its exact opposite in informal speech!

But the idea that this isn't something the community struggles with is nonsensical.

Turning the word upside-down to call the "uncertainty range" the "confidence interval" may not help the basic battle against agnotology. The forces of confusion keep insisting that action is counterindicated because uncertainty is broad. As I've always said, this is complete nonsense. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for a vigorous response. It's palpable but unstated in most of the sessions. People look at the uncertainties and are mostly concerned about cataclysms, not about false negatives. Schneider was quoted explicitly making the case that a false negative is far more dangerous than a false positive in this matter.

But it's a matter which is easy to distort. And so, those inclined to inaction stress uncertainty. This is odd enough. But then they criticize a community that is plainly obsessed with uncertainty of ignoring it!

We can use the actuarial concept of risk very nicely. Risk is cost-weighted probability. The risk spectrum in the climate matter is dominated by worst cases, not by best cases. And that is why uncertainty is not your friend. And if you advocate inaction, it is not your ally.

Meanwhile

There is a heat wave in Europe, and in particular, Florence has reported its highest temperature ever.

Austin has surpassed its maximum number of 100 degree days and is still counting.

The highest dewpoint in the history of Minnesota has been reported.

And there's this:

Conservative Cowardice?

Scott Denning thinks so.



Bart writes about it here.

The Horn

From http://horn.wfp.org/main.html via Tim O'Reilly

A humanitarian crisis has slowly unfolded in the Horn of Africa. Drought, conflict, and rising food prices have affected more than 13 million people in the region. On 20 July, famine conditions were declared in several southern regions of Somalia. The Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) forecasts that famine conditions will spread if humanitarian assistance does not increase. In response, WFP is planning to feed over 11.5 million people, including 3.7 million people in Somalia, 3.7 million in Ethiopia, and 2.7 million in Kenya.

Restricted aid access

Access to some vital areas is restricted to humanitarian aid organizations. The hatched area on the map shows areas in which some aid organizations are unable to work— including the places where people are most in need of assistance.

Operational efficiency

The figure of USD $0.50 per person per day is based on the average combined daily costs of World Food Programme's operations within Somalia, Ethiopia, & Kenya, as well as the number of people reached by those efforts.

For Press

The map on this page can be easily embedded on any website or blog - simply click here to copy and paste the embed code.