Category: weather

bookmark_borderDaniel Brouse: About the Author

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Q: Any background on membrane .com?

A: In 1994, I started a publishing company with another scientist (low temperature physicist and co-builder of the Ohio States supercomputer). The name of the publishing company is The Philadelphia Spirit Experiment. As the name suggests, it is a scientific experiment in the publishing of arts and science. At the time, domain names were free and the world wide web was 6 months old. We wanted a name that both rhymed and made a good scientific pun — everything passes through the Membrane Domain. The KingArthur.com anti-IQ test launched in 1995.

We were the first record company, fine arts, science, technology, math, and engineering publisher on the web. As such, we were the first to analize web traffic. Our monthly audience is over 300 million. Innovations include: the clickable button on a webpage, MP3 distribution, pay-per-download, free streaming music, the web-based video… and interactive games to save the planet (including a $1,000,000 prize to solve the Anthropogenic Global Warming problem.

My areas of expertise include: musicology, geology, meteorology, anthropology, biology, health & wellness, sociology, security, climate change, physics, finance, economics, statistics, computer science, data science, chaos theory, political science, publishing, logic, and philosophy. In general, my aptitude is in science, technology, engineering, and math.

— Daniel Brouse

bookmark_borderYou Can Not Fight the Rising Tide

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aA “Built atop spongy marsh and old tidal creeks filled with sawdust”
A report by Yale School of the Environment found cities are going to lose the costly battle to hold back the sea.

“It’s a nightmare,” says Ana Zimmerman, who moved her family to higher ground after her James Island home flooded twice.

“wall-off the historic downtown with an 8-mile-long seawall that would cost nearly $2 billion. ”

“In Miami, the Army Corps is studying a 13-foot-high flood wall … Most of the estimated $8 billion price tag would be covered by federal taxpayers … ”

“In Galveston, Texas, the Corps has proposed placing a massive Dutch-style surge gate … estimated cost has ballooned from $2 billion to $37 billion ”

“In New Jersey, the Corps last year published a preliminary plan … Cost estimates range from several billion dollars up to $15 billion.”

“In New York, the Corps proposed building a huge seawall across Lower Manhattan … somewhere between $62 billion and $119 billion”

“In America, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that climate change tells us there are some places where growth is no longer possible.”

“a big wall of distraction”

“Miamians seem to have this horrible concept of permanence of place, even though Miami has only been around a hundred years ”

” the National Flood Insurance Program, which is $20 billion in debt”

“Americans keep flocking to the coast, and builders keep accommodating them. ”

“We’re continuing with more building on a peninsula that’s sinking”

More articles on Flood Insurance, Rising Sea Levels and Global Warming.

bookmark_borderNeed to Prepare for Millions of Climate Change Refugees

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World needs to prepare for ‘millions’ of climate displaced: U.N.
January 21, 2020

Reuters reported:
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – The world needs to prepare for millions of people being driven from their homes by the impact of climate change, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Speaking to Reuters at the World Economic Forum, Filippo Grandi said a U.N. ruling this week meant those fleeing as a result of climate change deserved international protection, and that it had broad implications for governments.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee made the landmark ruling on Monday in relation to Ioane Teitiota, from the Pacific nation of Kiribati, who brought a case against New Zealand after authorities denied his claim of asylum.

“The ruling says if you have an immediate threat to your life due to climate change, due to the climate emergency, and if you cross the border and go to another country, you should not be sent back, because you would be at risk of your life, just like in a war or in a situation of persecution,” Grandi said.

“We must be prepared for a large surge of people moving against their will,” he said. “I wouldn’t venture to talk about specific numbers, it’s too speculative, but certainly we’re talking about millions here.”

Potential drivers include wildfires like those seen in Australia, rising sea levels affecting low-lying islands, the destruction of crops and livestock in sub-Saharan Africa and floods worldwide, not least in parts of the developed world.

Whereas for most of its 70 years UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has worked to assist those fleeing poorer countries as a result of conflict, climate change is more indiscriminate.

“It is further proof that refugee movements and the broader issue of migration of populations … is a global challenge that cannot be confined to a few countries,” said Grandi.
70 MILLION DISPLACED

Yet the convention relating to the status of refugees, signed in 1951, made no provision for climate change as a reason for people to flee their country and seek asylum elsewhere. As climate impacts grow, legal questions become more complicated.

UNHCR, whose budget has risen from $1 billion a year in the early 1990s to $8.6 billion in 2019 as conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have forced civilians to flee, now assists more than 70 million forcibly displaced people.

Turkey is the largest recipient, with more than 4 million refugees and asylum seekers, the vast majority from Syria. That has strained Turkey’s public finances and led President Tayyip Erdogan to demand more assistance from Europe.

Last November, Erdogan threatened to open the door for Syrian refugees to head to Europe unless the European Union stepped up, and he is now calling for the “resettlement” of up to 1 million Syrians in the north of their homeland.
Slideshow (12 Images)

Grandi said European governments needed to think hard about solutions to the migrant crisis, which has affected them since 2015, but also show more understanding of Turkey’s situation.

“We must recognise that, for the past several years (Turkey)has been hosting the largest refugee population in the world,” he said. “There’s a lot of political talk. I concentrate on the substance of this, which is ‘let’s strengthen Turkey’s ability to host refugees until they can go back safely, voluntarily to their countries’.”

More on Climate Change Refugees

More on Climate Change

bookmark_borderGroundwater Rise

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Goundwater rise is a problem that will be exasperated by global warming and sea level rise. As the sea level rises, ocean water will inundate the coast, as well as, push groundwater up toward the surface inland.

“Water will leach inside homes through basement cracks. Toilets may become chronically backed up. Raw sewage may seep through manholes. Brackish water will corrode sewer and water pipes and inundate building foundations. And most hazardous of all, water percolating upward may flow through contaminants buried in the soil, spreading them underground and eventually releasing them into people’s homes.”
— Kristina Hill, professor of urban and environmental design at UC Berkeley
(Bay Nature magazine / Spring 2019)

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderThe Collapse Of Nature

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Worldwide insect populations are in decline by as much as 80%. Insects are in a downward spiral threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, as reported by a global scientific review.

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades. The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

The review was published in the journal Science Direct is entitled, “Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers” by Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, Kris A.G.Wyckhuys, etal.

Highlights

• Over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction.
• Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and dung beetles (Coleoptera) are the taxa most affected.
• Four aquatic taxa are imperiled and have already lost a large proportion of species.
• Habitat loss by conversion to intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines.
• Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are additional causes.

“If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind,” said Francisco Sánchez-Bayo.

“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.”The demise of insects appears to have started at the beginning of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950’s and 1960’s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last twenty years.

“If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind”

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderFlood Risk and Real Estate Values

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The risk of floods increasing do to human induced climate change is affecting real estate values. Though the risk is increasing in all flood zones, coastal areas are already feeling the pain. Most homeowner’s don’t know about flood insurance until they need it. Then, it is too late.

Bloomberg News reports:

Recent research confirms that the climate threat is already showing up in prices. Economists Asaf Bernstein, Matthew Gustafson and Ryan Lewis have a recent paper showing that houses exposed to sea-level rise of between 0 and 6 feet have been selling at a 7 percent discount relative to houses a similar distance from the beach that aren’t exposed. The time period they look at is 2007-2016 — before the damage from Harvey. They also confirm that the discount is higher in locations where people report more worry about climate change.

Another recent study, by environmental researchers Jesse Keenan Thomas Hill and Anurag Gumber, shows something similar. Focusing on Miami-Dade County, they show that higher-elevation locations have risen in price faster than similar locations at low elevations. That’s consistent with the theory that wealthy buyers pay a premium to escape flooding risk.

More About Flood Insurance

bookmark_borderFlood Insurance Rates Rising

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“your flood insurance premiums could rise up to 18 percent each year”

A recent article in the Miami Herald reports:

“FEMA confirmed to the Miami Herald that it is looking into switching to risk-based pricing in 2020, which would end the subsidies most coastal communities enjoy on their flood insurance premiums and show the true dollar cost of living in areas repeatedly pounded by hurricanes and drenched with floods — like South Florida.

“That means insurance is about to become very expensive, and it kind of sounds the bell that these are high-risk areas,” said Wayne Pathman, a Miami-based land use attorney and chair of the city’s Sea Level Rise Committee.

Premiums through the National Flood Insurance Policy are already rising an average of eight percent this year; the first wave of pricier policies started in April. That brings the average annual price (including surcharges) for a policy holder to $1,062.

It’s all part of a strategy to make the NFIP financially stable. The program is $20 billion in debt (and that’s after the government forgave $16 billion of that debt last year) because it pays out much more each year than it takes in.”

More about Flood Insurance
More about Climate Change

bookmark_borderCan You Weather The Whether?

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Sidd says:

i can’t believe anybody is moving to the coast. But apparently
some people like throwing their money into the ocean.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/the-latest-climate-threat-for-coastal-cities-more-rich-people

paper on Miami Dade climate effect on real estate appreciation
the higher the better…
paper is at
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb32#supplementarydata

may affect us at some point. lets b careful
not to post more than fair use allows, not the
whole article.
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-news-agencies-hail-major-eu.html

total precip goin up (mainly over ocean)
but areas of precip shrinking (also mainly over ocean)
== smaller and more intense storms over ocean
(in case i didn’t spell it out: watch out coastline and islands)
open access paper at
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab375/pdf

roundup more toxic than claimed
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/08/weedkiller-tests-monsanto-health-dangers-active-ingredient

“Perhaps you think youâ??re safe because the flood map shows your home is on high ground. But you still need infrastructure â?? things like roads, power plants, water treatment facilities, airports and drinking-water wellfields. So while your house may be high and dry, good luck getting to the grocery store, the doctorâ??s office or out of town.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article210451219.html

More on Climate Change and Flood Insurance<?h2>

bookmark_borderWhen Your Property Goes Underwater

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The right to the free flow of water has long maintained “public right-of-way easements” in the United States. In general, if a waterway is navigable, it is a public right-of-way; however, the results of climate change and rising sea levels have turned people’s private property into navigable waterways.

An article in Bloomberg entitled The Fighting Has Begun Over Who Owns Land Drowned by Climate Change highlights recent disputes over water right-of-ways:

America’s coastal cities are preparing for legal battles over real estate that slips into the ocean.

A decade after the global financial crisis popularized the term “underwater real estate,” parts of the U.S. are grappling with a new, more literal version of that problem.

“There’s no question it will be a huge fight,” says Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in environmental law. “We don’t exactly know the boundaries of what the state can do.” For centuries, a body of law called the public trust doctrine has stipulated that, when it comes to coastal property, anything below the average high-tide line is owned by the government for the use and benefit of the public. Those rules also cover what happens when the high-tide line moves. If that movement happens suddenly—for example, if a portion of beach is washed away by a storm—the land owner retains title to the property provided he or she restores it to dry land.

More on Flood Insurance and Climate Change

bookmark_borderCalifornia Increasing Weather Volatility

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One of the most notable changes in weather doing to global warming is volatility. “We are not saying that the Earth’s temperature is just going to rise. In general, as energy is added to a system, the fluctuations in the system increase. So, we expect more storms, more droughts, more wildfires, more floods, more fluctuations of all kinds. What we are saying is that weather conditions will become more volatile due to the impact of humans,” said Sidd Mukherjee and Daniel Brouse of The Membrane Domain (2004). The increase in extreme weather events wreak havoc on humans’ ability to adapt to the changing environment. For instance, severe droughts followed by severe rains create devastating floods.

A new study (23 April 2018) published in the Journal Nature, Increasing precipitation volatility in twenty-first-century California, forecasts extreme weather events in California:

Mediterranean climate regimes are particularly susceptible to rapid shifts between drought and flood—of which, California’s rapid transition from record multi-year dryness between 2012 and 2016 to extreme wetness during the 2016–2017 winter provides a dramatic example. Projected future changes in such dry-to-wet events, however, remain inadequately quantified, which we investigate here using the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble of climate model simulations. Anthropogenic forcing is found to yield large twenty-first-century increases in the frequency of wet extremes, including a more than threefold increase in sub-seasonal events comparable to California’s ‘Great Flood of 1862’. Smaller but statistically robust increases in dry extremes are also apparent. As a consequence, a 25% to 100% increase in extreme dry-to-wet precipitation events is projected, despite only modest changes in mean precipitation. Such hydrological cycle intensification would seriously challenge California’s existing water storage, conveyance and flood control infrastructure.