Us

When tornadoes tore through the southeast a few weeks ago, one meteorologist interviewed by news media talked about how unusually big and strong the outbreak was.  There was even a case of three twisters circling each other in a cluster.  But the good news, he said, was that this was so unusual that we didn't have to worry about another outbreak this year.

Then came the tornadoes this week that hit Alabama and Georgia, went into Tennesseee and even Virginia, leaving unprecedented destruction and killing upwards of 300 people.  "Some of the killer tornadoes that ripped across the South may have been among the largest and most powerful ever recorded, experts suggested," said a Reuters report.

"We have never experienced such a major weather event in our history," said the Tennessee Valley Authority in an official statement. "Hundreds of thousands of consumers are without power because of damage to power lines and other equipment…."  Power was cut to a nuclear power plant in Alabama, but emergency systems reportedly worked well enough for a controlled shutdown.

President Obama visited the hardest hit city of Tuscaloosa.  He promised the federal government would do everything possible to help people there.  This is clearly a time when everyone wants the government's help--even Texas governor Rick Perry, who has more than once threatened to secede because of his hostility to the federal government, was whining that the President was helping Alabama but not Texas, which is hard-hit from massive fires.

But the congressional budget cut funds for FEMA and specifically for emergency capabilities.  Moreover, the hostility to infrastructure projects in the guise of budget-balancing in the states as well as in the GOPer House, means that municipalities are not prepared for disasters which will inevitably result from the growing changes that make up the Climate Crisis--and the power of these tornadoes could well be such a result.  Specifically the recent flooding in Missouri revealed the inadequate levies there.  As climate studies like this one (with data from 2010) indicate, the weather-related and climate-related disasters of this spring are historically unusual, but they may well prefigure the "new normal."  Even USA Today notes the likelihood of this due to the Climate Crisis.

Now in the next days and weeks, the country faces record flooding in the midwest, including from the Mississippi River.  This tumultuous spring follows a winter of such extreme weather that the U.S. economy was strongly affected--the drop in growth is attributed largely to winter weather, and to higher commodity prices, some of which result from bad weather elsewhere in the world as well.  This, too, is likely to become the new normal.

I don't think the current political wallowing in angry fantasy and denial is unrelated to both climate news and the obvious facts of the weather and climate-related catastrophes--storms, floods, droughts, fires.  That's probably a starting point for another installment in my Climate Inside series.  But for now these disasters--coupled with the furor over the GOPer attempt to destroy Medicare--may be sobering enough for people to be able to hear what President Obama has been saying about government as the way we take care of one another beyond our personal reach.  Then maybe they'll begin to hear his insistent application of this principle to the future.