The horrific flooding in Alberta will be felt by all Canadians, at least in the costs -- both economic recovery and insurance rates. In the U.S., many people who lost their homes now cannot return because they cannot afford the new insurance rates. Costs are going up everywhere in North American and the Insurance industry has been warning us, but we have chose to not pay a nickle to save a dollar.
Just last year, the Insurance Bureau of Canada issued a report warning that such disasters are on their way. (a 4-page pdf)
http://www.ibc.ca/en/Natural_Disasters/d...
They warned then that ...
"Canada has become wetter during the past half century, with mean precipitation across the country increasing by about 12%. On average, Canada now experiences 20 more days of rain compared with the 1950s. These changes to the climate are likely responsible, at least in part, for the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events in Canada, such as floods, storms and droughts, because warmer temperatures tend to produce more violent weather patterns."
In Canada, catastrophic events cost roughly $1.6B in 2011 and almost $1B in each of the two previous years. The majority of these insured losses were caused by extreme weather events, but Canada’s home and business insurers are also seeing an increase in claims resulting from smaller weather events that nevertheless result in significant property damage for consumers.
"Canada must adapt to this new reality."
-- The IBC.
To be an educated voter, I encourage you to read the report. Yes, it is too late to avoid this disaster, but the insurance industry is not warning about just one disaster. There are more coming, and the governments have to decide how much to pay to slow climate change, to prepare for weather events and to recover from weather events. Of the three, where would you like most of your dollars to go?
Chaim Govnov make a very good point about land use. Flooding, especially in areas that have not experienced flooding before, is typically due to land use issues. Take the Mississippi. Historic flood plains that used to "absorb" excess river flow, were all "walled off" to make farms and occasionally towns. This increased the water (and the height of the river) down stream. Cities and towns build higher and higher dikes to prevent flooding, which diverts even larger flows farther down stream. All of this leads to record floods, even with consistent rainfall.
So with Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC) you would really be looking at rainfall. Of course no particular event can be attributed to AGCC - so while any record rainfalls MIGHT be due to AGCC, there is no way to prove it.
This is also true with respect to seasonal variations and even annual variations. AGCC is a long term change in the climate, something we look for in decadal variations. Also remember that AGCC does NOT exist in a vacuum. There are many other climate forcings that are complete natural, although these are cyclical (as much up as down - think Sine Wave). There are up and down variations in AGCC signals, but the long term trend is up.
I won't bother to address the other answers as their informational content is less than zero, except for kano, who is parroting a claim that is unsupported by the data. While it IS true that the trend of SURFACE TEMPERATURE is (flat, slightly up, slightly down - depends on data set) over the last decade+, there are 2 problems with claiming that this (a) disproves AGCC or (b) means AGCC has stopped.
1) There are always variations in the long term Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST). During the 1970s, GAST went WAY down, so much so that a small minority of scientists thought we might be entering a new glacial period. SMALL minority - and this was considered a ludicrous claim by those of us who work in the field. This recent period is just a small part of the data, and cannot be used to make claim (a) or (b).
2) Using the GAST to determine that AGCC is (a myth/ended) is like saying that an entire watermelon is hard and green, because that is what the skin is. If you look at the average heat content of the upper 1000m of the oceans, it has been going steadily upward over the last couple of decades. And there is FAR, FAR more heat content in that 1000m of Ocean than in the thin skin where the GAST is measured. Why is GAST flat (or whatever)? As I said above, AGCC does not exist in a vacuum. There are many other signals that could conceivable counteracting any surface warming due to AGCC.
Alberta , Australia , China , India last week & today on BBCTV news , South America , Europe last month on the Elbe & Danube ; the more the oceans heat up the more water vapour is in the atmosphere making clouds so its gotta come down somewhere , usually high cold mountain tops & the poles of the Artic & Antartic but the more forests are killed & swamps dryed out & rivers narrowed by building the faster rain returns to the sea ! Carpet every available space with food plants & oxygen making trees & algi might help mitigate neglect & greed.
Flooding such as Alberta had is not really caused by global warming. It is cause by suburban sprawl and development of land. Every year more land is turned to commercial and residential use. The land does not absorb water as well because of the missing trees, and other plants. Now the land has houses, driveways, roads and mown lawns. Instead of water being absorbed by soil it now runs off into streams and rivers. The ground water table shrinks and disappears, rains go almost immediately into rivers and cause them to flood. The water used to flow into rivers over weeks and months but now it ends up there in hours. Get used to it, flooding is only going to get worse in the future as more area becomes developed and the all-important wet-lands disappear from nature.
the extremes of weather have been noticed by the insurance industry too. Yes, there is a connection, but attributing one event is not sufficient. Building on floodplains is certainly more problematic.
The Polar Jet stream has behaved differently with a melting arctic, it accounts for very hot Alaska and sustained weather problems south.
We have global warming in the Northern Hemisphere every summer, because the earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees. The climate warms up when the top half of the globe is pointed towards the sun. In the winter we get global cooling... As far as man-made global warming goes, its only a myth.
NO! The "experts" will claim it is even though their predictions ALWAYS turn out false.
'New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now,' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989
No. The flooding is caused by water.
No It's weather not climate change, and if the climate is changing it seems to be cooling not warming, the average earths temperatures have fallen slightly over the last 10yrs.
If you are referring to so-called "AGW"......No!
I heard Dr David Schindler explain it this way.If a baseball player hits a home run it wouldn't necessarily be because of his steroid use but if he uses steroids one would expect him to hit home runs more often
