Monday, January 17, 2011

Apparently We Left Just in the Nick of Time (give or take a century or two)

Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’
A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake...

...The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.
Hmmm, I almost sense a pattern in there.  About every 200 years, with an occasional skip.  Of course, it hasn't happened yet, but if it does, they just want you to know, that even though it happened repeatedly in the past, it will be global warming at fault, just like the 50 year drought that might happen if it doesn't...
The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

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