No, the lesson is not that Katrina was caused by or made worse by global warming. There is, at present, no evidence that Katrina was meteorological payback for our ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Rather, the lesson of Katrina is about risk.
The possibility of a large hurricane wreaking havoc on the Louisiana coast has been known for years. Everything from infrastructure damage to long-term flooding of New Orleans to the enormous refugee problem was foreseen in excruciatingly accurate detail.
We also knew the things we could do to reduce the impact of a killer hurricane. We could shore up the levees, for example, or work to recover the disappearing wetlands and barrier islands that shield New Orleans from storms. But these were deemed "too expensive" and postponed. We rolled the dice.
Now, our country is going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans and surrounding areas -- at least ten times more than the cost of mitigating the catastrophe in the first place.
What does this have to do with global warming?
Global warming is also a risk. Because of limitations in our scientific knowledge of the climate, as well as our inability to predict how technology and the world's economies will evolve over the next century, we cannot precisely predict how our future climate will evolve and what the impacts of the warming will be.
A 2001 assessment [PDF] by the scientific community suggested that, by the year 2100, the Earth's average temperature will be 1.5°C to 5.8°C warmer than today. The bottom end of this range is likely manageable by adapting to the changing climate. But the top end of the range, a warming of 5.8°C, is impossible to adapt to; it would be an ecological and humanitarian disaster of unimaginable proportions. At present, we simply have no idea which of these futures we're heading for.
Early in his first term, President Bush often cited scientific uncertainty as a reason to defer action on climate change. As that argument progressed over the last few years from being merely wrong to patently ridiculous, the president has quietly shifted to the argument that addressing global warming is too expensive.
Would it be expensive? Possibly. But it's also worth noting that opponents of environmental regulations always make this argument, and it almost always turns out to be wrong. For example, prior to the phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete the ozone layer, opponents proffered all forms of apocalyptic predictions about the consequences. In the end, the phaseout was essentially unnoticeable.
President Bush's wait-and-see policy on global warming is a titanic roll of the dice. He's betting that future climate change will be modest, and that if it's not, we'll have enough time to reduce emissions enough to head off the impacts.
Make no mistake, he might be right. Katrina, however, showed us what happens when policymakers are wrong. Sometimes it's better to spend money to head off an uncertain risk than to wait for the risk to materialize. Worst-case scenarios sometimes do come true.
For global climate change, wait and see is particularly risky. The cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to start soon and do it slowly over the coming century. If we wait a few decades and then begin a crash course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly, the cost will be vastly greater and our ability to head off global warming will be reduced. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases right now might be expensive, but delaying might be much more expensive.
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Comments
View as Flat
Bart Anderson Posted 3:28 pm
24 Oct 2006
(a) hurricanes tend to become more destructive as ocean temperatures rise, and
(b) an unchecked rise in greenhouse gas concentrations will very likely increase ocean temperatures further, ultimately overwhelming any natural oscillations. Although, the connection is not direct: Due to this semi-random nature of weather, it is wrong to blame any one event such as Katrina specifically on global warming - and of course it is just as indefensible to blame Katrina on a long-term natural cycle in the climate.
Yet this is not the right way to frame the question. As we have also pointed out in previous posts, we can indeed draw some important conclusions about the links between hurricane activity and global warming in a statistical sense. The connection between climate change and hurricanes only makes the rest of your essay more persuasive.
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Coby Beck Posted 4:42 pm
24 Oct 2006
Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!
-- Anonymous
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Zarkov Posted 6:13 pm
24 Oct 2006
I disagree. Certainly after Katrina, the next hurricane in the gulf was the fastest to spin-up than any seen before.
Why ? Katrina caused a massive oil spill and the oil slick on the gulf was considerably thickened.
Oil dampens wave height, making the surface of the sea glassy which increases hurricane spin.
If the UAS continues to pollute the seas with oil, then you get what is owed to you.
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TokyoTom Posted 11:21 pm
24 Oct 2006
I agree 100% that we should invest in establishing an AGW mitigation policy, but no feasible mitigation policy will prevent already commited warming, and of course additional commitments will accumulate for the time being.
Katrina might make a great political 2x4 for Dems, but an AGW policy will not obviate the need to mitigate likely climate change impacts. In the case of hurricanes, much more immediately effective policies would be to start restoring up barrier islands and wetlands, strengthening infrastructure, improving evacuation capabilities, and moving people off of the most vulnerable coasts (or at least eliminating the various subsidies that incentivize their ongoing presence and further development).
Sincerely,
TT
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:28 am
25 Oct 2006
Second point- global warming is also about equity. Whereas the rich countries have contributed most to CO2 emissions, it is the poor countries that stand to suffer the most since they don't have the wealth to deal with disasters, relocation, etc. This is why I have suggested a global disaster relief fund and technology transfer from rich to poor countries as part of GW strategy.
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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kmp Posted 3:03 am
25 Oct 2006
In the case of hurricanes, much more immediately effective policies would be to start restoring up barrier islands and wetlands, strengthening infrastructure, improving evacuation capabilities, and moving people off of the most vulnerable coasts (or at least eliminating the various subsidies that incentivize their ongoing presence and further development).
As I understood the thrust of Andrew's piece, it was that Katrina is a good analogy for the risk/benefit scenario in which we currently find ourselves with regard to global warming. We knew, in detail, the risks of not better preparing New Orleans for a strong hurricane. We chose to accept additional risk for the "benefit" of not spending the money in the near-term. Hence we will now be spending much more money in the long-term, in part, a "penalty" for accepting a higher risk scenario.
One imagines that, if the current administration applies logic & analysis to anything at all, they consider the risk of global warming negative impacts to be low (imperfect science, low range is feasible, etc) and the benefits of not doing anything now high (i.e. more money in my pocket today).
Unfortunately, part of our struggle is against human nature itself. The risk assessment guy gets no glory. If I run a toxicology trial and discover a potentially life-threatening toxicity of a new drug, prior to trials in man, I do not get pats on the back. In fact, the researchers who originally championed the drug for it's pharmacological properties are usually pissed off and argue endlessly with you. The point is you never know how many lives you saved, because your work killed the drug before it got a chance to do harm. However, if I don't run the appropriate study, or I missed the significance of the finding, or I completely understood the significance of the finding and was overruled by superiors, I am the one who takes the heat when people start dying in clinical trials. It's a lose-lose situation.
Global warming is the same way; if we start trying to deal with the impact of climate change now, we will never know how successful we were (i.e. how bad the damage would have been if we did nothing). But if we do nothing now, it dosen't make us feel really good to be the "I told you so" guy when the water is up to our chins.
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wacki Posted 10:53 am
25 Oct 2006
I don't see how you can say no evidence. I mean you can say "the link between Katrina and global warming has not been established." or something similar.
But it seems pretty clear to me that there is a very strong correlation w/ rising SST's. I mean, how can you dismiss causality in such a nonchalant and absolute manner when there is such a clear correlation in these graphs:
Logical Science hurricane analysis
And according to Judith Curry, most climatologists agree global warming has played a role in the overall increasing trend.
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TokyoTom Posted 3:46 pm
25 Oct 2006
My point is a side comment simply to caution that hurricane policy and climate change policy should not be conflated.
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bookerly Posted 7:01 pm
25 Oct 2006
Given the utter failure of the government during and after Katrina, there seems to me to be one clear, if scary lesson.
Anyone who expects mitigation for global warming to work is deluding themselves. The government can't think its way out of a wet paper bag.
patrick
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Biodiversivist Posted 11:44 pm
25 Oct 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:02 am
26 Oct 2006
I saw a 60 minutes piece on a small Gulf Shores town in Mississippi.
It was a touching story of a father and son sorting through the rubble and trying to rebuild.
I was touched.
Until the end...when they focused on a sign that showed the high water mark of a flood from the 1960s.
The father said triumphantly they would "rebuild this town again".
Rebuild? Obviously they have a history of being wiped out every 40 or so years, global warming or not. I really don't have a lot of sympathy for people who want to live the beachfront lifestyle and then make the rest of us pay for it time and time again.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
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bookerly Posted 4:17 am
26 Oct 2006
That a major city was destroyed with such a poor reaction from the government. Frankly, the entire leadership of the Department of Homeland Security should have been fired, as should the Department of Defense, and Bush should have been impeached.
Which is not to advocate a particular re-building plan, but really, this has been pathetic.
I agree, BioD, it must be shown, but more than shown, it must be told what to do, and what is and is not acceptable. In my dreams, anyway.
The world watched this after watching the Disaster in the Desert, and lost even more respect for America.
Given the size and complexity of the problems likely to be cause by global warming, only governments will be big enough and powerful enough to respond.
Anyone who has fantasies about their individual efforts being enough has watched too many bad late night movies.
The same goes for anyone who thinks that individual corporate efforts will succeed, or local efforts (notice how quickly the good done by California was wiped out by Texas and it's new coal power plants).
Only co-ordinated efforts among the national governments can really solve this problem.
Alas, our current national government is a bunch of idiots. We should be scared.
patrick
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