What if this is the way it’s going to be now?

Been out looking at the damage. Downtown Montpelier flooded, but has drained. Rivers are still high, and some roads are in bad shape, but they’re open now. One of the two town rec fields (not the one where the Mountaineers play, the one near the interstate) is a complete lake, and it’s hard to imagine it not being a lake anytime soon. The main road up to the largest regional school has a 20 foot chasm in the middle of it with a torrential river running through it. The drainage pipe that had run under the pavement when the chasm was still a road is some 50 feet downstream, bent and partially lodged in a tree.

And it’s worse as you go towards Barre. In the section of Berlin that lies between, National Guard trucks are still about, and there is more road damage, as well as signs of significant commercial flooding. Lots of mud. I didn’t make it to Barre, but it sounds like a disaster. I saw pictures of entire roads destroyed.

Last Spring was no fun, but it wasn’t this bad. It was, however, a bit more nasty than usual in the south and midwest. All of which leads one to ask; is this an anomaly, or is spring really turning into this? Might this be a taste of the new normal, given that it’s consistent with what we’ve been told for years to expect from climate change?

Too early to make any conclusions perhaps, but it doesn’t feel too early to wonder anxiously.

11 thoughts on “What if this is the way it’s going to be now?

  1. “what we’ve been told for years to expect from climate change?”

    Yep, more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more torrential downpours.

    This is only the beginning, folks.  Every year will get worse, as the planet gets hotter.

    This is the new normal, every year we should expect major road washouts around the state.

    But remember, Global Warming is a myth invented by Liberals to drive capitalists out of business.

    According to the Republican Leadership, all this flooding is a myth.  

    So vote Republican if you want more of this kind of weather.

  2. So, if we’re not supposed to use localized events to ascribe the effects of climate change when they don’t viscerally support the view that it’s changing, then should we use localized or even national events to anxiously wonder about the causal relationships between the two when they do? I listen to right-wing climate change denialists “har har” about massive snow storms in March or April, as proof of the lack of climate change, but isn’t your question similar thinking?

    “Last spring was no fun, but it wasn’t this bad” is a subjective observation based on your experience (which, I’d agree with, btw). However, the question “is spring really turning into this?” doesn’t logically follow any more than would, “Last summer was beautiful and comfortable with seasonally average temperatures in XXXXXXX, and therefore, climate change doesn’t exist and this is what we can expect.

    I’ll put this uncomfortable personal nugget out there. I’m not really sure what to think about global climate change. I AM sure that this issue has become unnecessarily political. I’ve seen Al Gore’s movie more than once. The majority of the really smart people I know, trust and have spoken with about this believe that it’s occurring. The overwhelming evidence supports the conclusions that the overwhelming majority have made in regard to the issue. However, the way that the lines appear to have been drawn in the sand on this issue is not only politically challenging, it doesn’t seem to have advance the cause all that much. I’d put myself in the camp that says, “Let’s not get stuck on whether or not it’s happening, the ideas that the movement of those who believe it is, are worthy and defensible on their merits, and ought to be considered as they do no harm” (It’s a nice camp but the sign’s a bit long”).

    Anyway, thanks for asking the question.  

  3. Of course no storm like this could pass through without damage but how might the damage have been mitigated if our infrastructure was in top notch shape?

    Roads,bridges,storm drains and municipal sewerage treatment sites are, from what I understand generally in tough shape making the effect worse perhaps.

    Tax cuts are service and infrastructure cuts.

     

  4. The Koch brothers and Exxon/Mobil have done their ‘educational’ jobs well with well-spent millions.  Place enough seeds of doubt and you can delay, delay (Tom? no, wrong one), delay until it’s too late.  But each day, month, year of delay enriches them immensely.  Look, they’re mortal and, as I see it, all they care about is keeping themselves fat and happy for the rest of their lives, after that they don’t give a rat’s ass.  (for more on this read: Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes or Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan who looks at the PR machines behind denialism).

    Ok… I said I was siding somewhat with the devil’s advocate.  Well, the devil is in the details, and the problem with chaotic systems (and the deniers well know this) is you cannot pin ONE effect to ONE cause.  Stay up until 3 in the morning and then the next day go about without a jacket on a cold winter day (like most teens these days).  Two days later you have a cold.  Did the lack of a jacket cause the cold?  Did staying up until three a.m. cause the cold?  No to both.  It was a virus, but both activities provided conditions favorable for the virus to penetrate a normally healthy immune system.

    Our biosphere has multitudinous feedback systems for maintaining balance.  Goddess knows we’ve given them numerous whacks, and these systems are off-balance,  attempting to right themselves – unless, they move to new ‘set points’.  We’ve been in a ‘temporary’ set point called the Holocene for just over 10,000 years.  

  5. On the one hand, they want to irresponsibly cut state and fed budgets for everything except corporate subsidies and defense to a bare minimum, leaving little or no money for infrastructure. Meanwhile, their corporate-sponsored and highly successful decade-long foot dragging on a real response to climate change means that we are now all going to have to live with the consequences: ongoing, relentless destruction of infrastructure, without the means to replace or even repair that which is lost to mother nature’s rage.

    The irony will of course be lost on them (see, for example congressman Lou Barletta from PA, who is pissed off that the EPA isn’t doing enough for his constituents — only weeks after he voted with his GOP friends to completely defund the EPA), but it really would be interesting to hear how the “smaller government, screw the environment” crowd presume to deal with this reality: inadequate budgets, but massively increasing demands for precisely the kind of services that governments provide best.

    Or are they going to ask their friends the Koch Brothers to rebuild their culverts and roads so they can get safely to the next tea party barbecue? Good luck with that…

  6. It’s obvious- Shumlin signs Health Care Bill, Montpelier goes underwater.  We’ve been punished for our liberal ways.

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