Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the Some of you will already know that Roger Pielke, Jr. and Judy Curry have been having a little back-and-forth over on Prometheus about hurricanes and global warming. The latest tête-à-tête started because of this ridiculous WaPo op-ed. Roger skewered the op-ed here and in the comments Judy partially came to its defense.
The op-ed is far beyond reasonable, and Roger already sufficiently deconstructed it, so it's not worth the time discussing it further here. But there is one thing I'd like to bring out of the discussion between R and J.
Judy says:
Hurricane Katrina, even tho there was no direct causal link with global warming, has served as a huge wakeup call to the American public that global warming might actually have some seriously adverse impacts if we were to see such storms more frequently in the future (this issue seems to have a much greater impact on the public than melting of polar ice gaps).
I am sympathetic to the sentiment behind this statement, but I also have a serious problem with it.
I am sympathetic for this reason: A great many serious earth science researchers and observers have been scratching their heads so hard on the American public's apathetic reaction to warnings about climate change that most need Rogain. These are seriously concerned people feeling as if they are screaming into an empty closet about a house burning down. Nobody's listening and nobody cares, despite the severity of the threat. I don't care what it takes -- just make them listen!! If Katrina was the wake-up call to get them to listen, so be it -- at least they are listening.
I am sympathetic to this frustration and the feeling of need to convey a great risk to an apathetic body. But there is a serious problem to using Katrina for this illustration, and my argument here hinges on the difference between Hurricane Katrina and Catastrophe Katrina.
The argument that Judy makes is "if we were to see such storms more frequently in the future" then we'd see more Catastrophe Katrinas. This is the illustrative hook to get the American public listening. But this hook makes Catastrophe Katrina appear as the inevitable result of Hurricane Katrina, which implies that a few more Hurricane Katrinas equals a few more Catastrophe Katrinas.
But before we go further down that road, let's deconstruct Katrina as an outlier event. Let's realize that Hurricane Katrina, as a natural event, was not an outlier. Hurricane Katrina was within the mean-plus-one-sigma of landfalling hurricanes and thus any "future Katrinas," if we are talking about future Hurricane Katrinas, will not be out of the ordinary.
What was out of the ordinary, however, was the outcome. Catastrophe Katrina was an extreme outlier -- probably the second or third most-expensive natural disaster in U.S. history behind the 1906 SF quake and the 1930's Dust Bowl. The difference is not nature, it is man.
Katrina was not a catastrophe born of nature, it was a catastrophe of horrible engineering management, land-use planning, pre-event planning and post-event response. Catastrophe Katrina was a failure of the translation of imagination. Simply put, many workers predicted the outcome but the political structure did not respond. (Scenario-building exercises predicted the catastrophic outcome in such detail that after rereading this National Geographic piece I wondered how they got so close in advance.) Catastrophe Katrina was predicted because the engineering shortcomings of New Orleans were well-understood and well-publicized. The catastrophe happened anyway.
So to say something like, "Hurricane Katrina illustrates what we might face in the future," is an (intentionally or unintentionally) disingenuous confusion of the outcome. The hypothetical speaker of the quote implies Catastrophe Katrina when they say Hurricane Katrina. Catastrophe Katrina is not a global warming problem; it is a land-use planning and engineering problem. Global warming or no, future catastrophes, while natural events will be their triggers, will occur because of the lack of preparation and thus will be entirely avoidable (the mitigation money and risk-reward questions are a separate discussion).
To continue to use Event Katrina as a global warming prop is to continue to diminish the relative roles between nature and man in making Catastrophe Katrina. And the longer we confuse the issue, the longer we avoid making the hard choices about engineering and land-use planning (about, for instance, allowing people to live well below sea level in flood-prone areas). These are the only useful tools that will help us avoid future Catastrophe Katrinas.
Comments
# 1 | James Bradbury | August 21, 2006 4:17 PM
Good point.
Gina Eosco and Bill Hooke also have an interesting piece in the June Issue of BAMS. It takes apart another commonly-too-narrow reading of "lessons learned" from the Katrina Catastrophe.
"Coping With Hurricanes
It's Not Just About The Emergency Response..."
http://ams.allenpress.com/amsonline/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FBAMS-87-6-751
It's a quick read... and well worth it.
# 2 | Markk | August 21, 2006 6:00 PM
With my hopeful brain I agree with your line of reasoning 100%. With the side of my brain that has dealt with planning commissions and what happens to their outputs (admittedly on a miniscule scale), there is an argument here.
Suppose you are so cynical that you believe our government can NEVER really plan either far in the future or at scales above a few 10's of billions of dollars. That is, you believe that appropriate land use policies even if created will never be put into effect or even if put into effect will be circumvented. Perhaps on top of that, that over time even brilliant recovery and disaster relief strategies will degenerate as quality people move on, and they are not continuously exercised.
In this case is there anything we can do? Well reducing GHG's seems like something we ought to be able to do - emissions standards, emissions licenses and trading, perhaps a few $10 G programs to actively pull CO2 out of the air, that same in subsidies to neutral energy, paid for by a BTU tax that would keep fossil fuel prices high to encourage alternatives, etc. Even if this works the effect will be small, but this could help a few percent maybe and it is something.
Anyway that is just the argument that floats up to me. Of course then that same cynical side realizes that if we can't do the first planning stuff, we ain't going to be able to do the second GHG stuff for a long enough time to matter either, so we might as well get ready for warm weather.
# 3 | John Fleck | August 21, 2006 6:11 PM
Markk -
I'm curious how if, in your hypothetical, "our government can NEVER really plan either far in the future or at scales above a few 10's of billions of dollars," you expect an effective greenhouse gas reduction policy to be developed. Compared to that, bulletproof levees seem like childs' play.
# 4 | gengar | August 21, 2006 7:19 PM
Surely this is not an either/or situation? Rather, it's two different facets of our civilisation's propensity to put much of its population (and economy) at the mercy of the environment. We're not good at appreciating the risks of building in low lying coastal areas, and we're even less good at appreciating the increased risks resulting from anthropogenic climate change.
As you say 'Catastrophe Katrina' was due to stupid land use and engineering decisions, but they're becoming even more stupid as we speak.
# 5 | Judith Curry | August 21, 2006 7:22 PM
kevin, one comment. the catastrophe katrina was substantially exacerbated by the fact that much of New Orleans is below sea level. Clearly, bad things happen when major hurricanes hit coastal cities that are below sea level. As sea level rises, south Florida and the outer banks of NC and the Georgia barrier islands will approach the status of below sea level. Its the combination of increased numbers of major hurricanes plus sea level rise that sets the stage for catastrophes in the future. Judy
# 6 | James | August 21, 2006 7:23 PM
There is a further extension of the argument that you're ignoring, however. Although Katrina was not out of the ordinary in size, it was out of the ordinary in impact. That much is a given. The question is, if you have more hurricanes, are you likely to have more of them hitting in such a way as to have major impact?
In a greenhouse enhanced world, we expect maybe more severe hurricanes (I think the results aren't in on that one), but definitely more hurricanes. If nothing else, the lenght of the hurricane season is extended, because sea surface temperatures get warm quicker and stay warm longer (I first ran across this observation from a rabidly liberal...insurance company).
If you toss the dice more often, you get snake eyes more often as well.
# 7 | Dan R. | August 21, 2006 7:43 PM
Lets not gloss over this. Katrina was wargammed and planed over 15 years ago (if not before). I remember the Times-Picayune articles in the 80's talking about what would happen if a Cat 4 storm hit NOLA just right -- and it was essentially a WORSE version of Katrina.
Katrina wouldn't have caused much damage to NOLA EXCEPT for the fact that the levees didn't withstand design specificaitons. That being said, the outcome was predicted and the polititions knew of the possibilities.
# 8 | kevin v | August 22, 2006 12:33 AM
Dan - thanks, I agree.
James K - the original Webster et al Science paper says that you have increased intensity of the average hurricane but not an increase in total hurricane numbers (thus what Judy said -- "increased numbers of major hurricanes"). Yes, you're right that an increase in the number of major hurricanes will lead to an increase in these outcomes, but the fact remains that the catastrophes the hurricanes cause can still be averted by intelligent and imaginative engineering.
Judy - true enough, I think you're right. But we can also argue that New Orleans, as would be the case with Florida cities as you're arguing, didn't start as a city below sea level -- it became so through steady subsidence. NO'lians knew about their predicament and decided to adapt (in the face of known hurricane threat) rather than move. As Dan R points out, they knew it took special engineering to survive but didn't adequately prepare. Certainly the AGW issue is in play along with the catastrophe mitigation issue -- both have influence on future catastrophes from hurricanes. But (similar to what Roger argues, I suppose), catastrophe mitigation steps are much more relevant here than AGW mitigation steps.
gengar -- I think it's a slightly different problem. We're fine at recognizing the risks, we're not fine amassing the political will to make necessary changes. This is true for both problems. I've argued in other posts that in the case of climate change there is plenty of understanding of the risk by the Average American, but so far they have no decided the personal risk is strong enough to warrant drastic change on the individual level. This may be wise or unwise, but I think this lack of personal action on the risk is what drives the lack of action on the political level.
Markk - I think John sums it up well. If we can't expect the decision-making structure to solve the catastrophe mitigation problem, then I'm not sure how we expect it to handle the much larger and more intractable problem of decarbonization.
# 9 | Markk | August 22, 2006 12:52 AM
Yes - that was my last paragraph - If we don't think we can do good planning(i.e. adaptation) then we can't do mitigation either. I am (when in a bad mood) pretty doubtful we can do either.
# 10 | coby | August 22, 2006 1:34 AM
FWIW, I think it goes without saying that in common discourse when one says "Hurricane Katrina" they are indeed talking "Catastrophe Katrina". Thus when people say "we will see more Katrina-like events in a global warming future" they are *not* talking about Cat 3 at landfall hurricanes, they are talking about human tragedies.
# 11 | Eric Wallace | August 22, 2006 2:22 AM
If this is true, then I think it rather contradicts your post's title. Katrina was not an engineering catastrophe if problems were known and not acted on. It was a political catastrophe.
# 12 | kevin v | August 22, 2006 10:58 AM
Thanks Eric - you're right, it's both. I was using "engineering" fairly loosly to mean tweaking the whole system, not just the actual, physical ACE projects.
Coby - you might be right, which argues strongly to make sure that when climate/weather/disaster people are talking, they make the distinction clear. If we are talking about global warming and hurricanes from a climatologist's perspective then we are still talking about hurricanes and not catastrophes. To automatically assume that stronger hurricanes -> more catastrophe is to say in advance that we have no control over avoiding future catastrophes. The base point here is that we do have that control and we should see the AGW/hurricane issue as a separate (albeit related) problem from controlling catastrophes.
# 13 | Margie Kieper | August 24, 2006 9:02 PM
Katrina not a natural catastrophe? Two hundred miles of coastline disagree with you. You really ought to expand your horizons beyond believing only what you see on the nightly news.
Just in case you can't read a map, either: NOLA isn't on the coast.
# 14 | kevin v | August 25, 2006 1:06 AM
not sure what your point is here, Margie. Every landfalling hurricane strikes a wide swath of coastline -- many of the Florida 'canes get areas more densely settled than the LA and MI coasts. But not every hurricane becomes the most or second-most expensive hurricane in US history. The difference, again, is engineering management, not nature.
Also not sure why you're reminding me that NO isn't on the coast (although being hydraulically connected is enough), unless you're making my point for me about how you get engineering failure even without getting a direct off-ocean hit.
# 15 | neil | August 25, 2006 9:29 AM
katrina was an engineering/management failure on the coast because people did not adequately protect the wetlands during the century leading up to katrina. read the nat. geographic article: the work of industry [oil, mostly] contributed to the loss of wetlands and their buffering ability when it comes to storms. geologists knew this. so, again, the impact of katrina was increased due to poor management.
and, hurricanes and coastlines are natural. they go together like bread and butter. that is not a catastrophe. it is a disturbance. ecosystems and their native inhabitants have evolved in such an interaction. invasive species are the ones making hurricanes a catastrophe in coastal ecosystems. katrina was a punk storm if you look into the past. google the term paleotempestology.