Worst rain in 1,000 years causes billion$ of damage in Florida. Except it's actually not true . . .

Photo above - alligator swimming alongside a car in Florida during a rainy day. Not this week - some other day

Miami – and Sarasota – both got 6.5 inches of rain on June 11th. The media immediately claimed this was a “once in a 1,000 year event”. Skeptic that I am, I googled this. And of course it turns out to be complete BS. See link below.

Granted, 6 inches in a day is A LOT. Especially in urban areas which have about 90% of their surfaces paved, and are hoping to divert all that water into their puny storm drains. So yes, I'm not shocked to see Miami and Sarasota photos of cars knee deep in water. I saw the same sort of pictures about a decade ago, in NYC, when their drainage pumps failed during a rainy day. Here in Tampa we don't pave every square inch of the land, and a lot of homes and apartments still have actual lawns. So, it was soggy, but we didn't fear for our lives.

Okay, so when WAS the rainiest day ever in Florida? Apparently October 12th, 1947. Yeps - 2 lifetimes ago. Florida got 15 inches. More than double Monday's fake 1,000 year record. Of course Miami wasn't 90% covered in concrete then. 1947 was a disaster, but nothing that could be considered an existential threat. Just an ordinary hurricane.

Rainiest year ever? That would also be 1947, with 70 inches. Florida's average rainfall is 55 inches. 2023 saw 53 inches, below average. As were the preceding 3 years. The driest year on record was 2006, with 41 inches. See where this is headed?

It's likely 2024 could have higher rainfall than average. It's UNLIKELY that both the above and below average measurements are the result of global warming. Or the breakup of the Antarctic ice sheet, etc.

However, global warming IS REAL. The current ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago. Cuomo Sapiens was barely holding on then, having mistimed our migration to Europe. Just 2 million people on planet earth, mostly in Africa sunning themselves comfortably. European Cuomo sapiens had already killed off ALL the Neanderthals thousands of years before that, so it wasn't clan v. clan wargames with spears which hurt out population. It was the glaciers the glaciers everywhere. So our ancestors turn to killing Mammoths. All of them. Chased them over cliffs, where they tumbled to their deaths, to become mammoth burgers.

Since the ice age peak most of the glaciers have retreated. We still have some in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, etc. And we still have ice caps at both the north and south poles. Which doesn't happen unless we're still IN an ice age. Which we are. Slow melt.

And those ice caps are going to keep melting, no matter what kind of car you drive, or how many tax rebates there are on solar panels. That's not to say we shouldn't continue to switch from coal and crude oil to solar. I'm on board with that. Just don't expect it to halt the ice caps from melting. Sea levels will rise as much as 6 feet by the year 2100. And by 195 feet when all the ice caps and glaciers are completely gone. That's when earth's climate will finally be “normal" again. And that sea level rise is going to cost us a LOT of money. Better not spend it all on tax rebates for solar panels, okay? We'll need some for moving vans.

I'm just sayin' . . .

~1,000-Year Deluge: Florida’s Rainfall Shatters Historical Records (scitechdaily.com)~

~1947 Florida–Georgia hurricane - Wikipedia~

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

ElwoodBlues · M

@SusanInFlorida says

However, global warming IS REAL

as part of her DENIAL of anthropogenic global climate change; suggesting (based on a few rainy days) that the 800,000 years of temperature and CO2 measurements are somehow wrong or irrelevant. Let's review some of the data.

First, why does increased CO2 raise temperatures? It's because CO2 & methane are transparent to visible light but more opaque to infrared. The solar energy comes pouring in via the visible spectrum, but the heat can't leave so easily via the infrared spectrum due to that opacity. Kids' version:
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-co2-and-other-greenhouse-gases

idealized quantitative model: https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/coriolis-force/a-simple-mathematical-model-of-the-greenhouse-effect.html

We have 800,000 years of climate data, covering about 7 ice ages. The climate data comes from bubbles in glacial ice, and is corroborated by data from lake & sea floor sediments.
https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores
CO2 & methane & temp data

Here's where the various data sets were collected:

What do climatologists DO with all that climate data? They build detailed mathematical models that run on supercomputers. They use some of the ice ages to train the models and others to test the models. Here's a simple model designed to run on a single workstation in the early 2000s.

http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/climate.html

Needless to say present day supercomputer models have far more precision. The most salient thing about the 800,000 years of climate data is the rate of change during those previous 7 ice ages compared to the current rate of change this century.

@SusanInFlorida is not alone in hypothesizing that all the climate change we see is "natural" i.e. independent of human activity. There are many right-wing politicians who agree with her. Her fellow Florida resident and convicted felon famously tweeted

So who is on the other side? Who endorses the notion that climate change is anthropogenic and can be ameliorated?

The 50,000+ members of the American Physical Society STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/15_3.cfm

The 173,000+ members of the American Chemical Society STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/policy/publicpolicies/sustainability/globalclimatechange/climate-change.pdf

The 120,000+ members of American Association for the Advancement of Science STRONGLY support greenhouse gas reduction.
https://www.aaas.org/resources/aaas-reaffirms-statement-climate-change

Those three scientific societies are NOT alone. They are joined by the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the The Geological Society of America, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences among others. https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

SW-User

@ElwoodBlues I've noticed that this Susan character goes silent once her obvious biases or even outright lies are exposed.

But then she deflects to another topic.

RedBaron · M

@SW-User As I suggested elsewhere, she’s a typical Trump person mirroring his persona: angry about everything but knowing virtually nothing.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@ElwoodBlues thanks for your bizarre claim that i denied that C02 increases temperatures. I never said that. Of course it does. Temperatures are also affected by . . .

1. Atmospheric water vapor
2. Solar cycles (sunspots)
3. Variations in solar output
4. Dust in the atmosphere

None of your bizarrely long reply explains why we have ice ages, and why they always recede. It's not due to tailpipe emissions over the past 500 million years.

ElwoodBlues · M

@SusanInFlorida As I've already said under this question, The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 800,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.

These 10x and 100x rates ARE due to CO2 emissions.

This comment is hidden. Show Comment