The Lawerence, Mass Fires

Severe Weather and Other Disasters, ,

My first thought on hearing of the outbreak of fires and explosions in Lawrence and Andover Mass was to wonder how many people living in or near these homes are having PTSD reactions right now. You may not remember this, or even know about it, but back in 1991 and 1992, when I was working in Lawrence and Andover and other New England locations doing archaeology, there was an amazing spate of arson attacks in the area. There were over 200 fires set in the city, many of old historic mills that burned to the ground. The people of Lawrence were truly traumatized by this. The cops arrested two people and charged them with several counts, but I don’t think they were ever determined to have been responsible. I don’t recall this spate of crimes ever being solved.

My second thought was, could this be the energy infrastructure Russian FSB/GRU attack that we were warned of?

It seemed early on that the gas fires in Lawrence were caused by large increase in pressure on the gas lines. The pressure in the gas lines going into your house is set to be just above atmospheric pressure, while the pressure in gas delivery lines can be very much higher. There are devices that down regulate the pressure as it gets nearer your house, and the lines in your neighborhood that feed individual buildings have the lower pressure. The main natural gas “transmission” lines have sensors that measure pressure, and computer systems that regulate pressure. There have been cases in the past (not necessarily in the US) where malicious code was used to blow up gas lines by changing the pressure. Interestingly, an instance of computers going wrong (which may or may not have been a cyber attack) caused the largest non-nuclear explosion ever, on the Trans-Siberian pipeline.

Most likely the Lawrence gas explosion involved something going wrong with pressure, and most likely that was something wrong with a valve (or human error, or whatever). But, given that we (Americans) were warned that the energy infrastructure had already been hacked by Russian agents (not regular people who are Russians, but by bad guy Russians working for bad guy Putin) …. well, somebody really should look into that. Just to be sure.

Manafort flips

Politics, , ,

Yesterday we learned that Trump campaign manager and Russian stooge Paul Manafort had decided to plead guilty to charges for which he was about to be tried. This morning, we learn that Manafort has agreed to cooperate and possibly be a witness for Robert Mueller’s special investigation of Russian government involvement in US elections and related things.

I’m not sure how much Manafort’s cooperation will actually help the special council’s investigation. I would guess that there isn’t much he can add to what must be a huge iceberg of evidence already gathered.

But there is a more important outcome here, and it is social and political. The absurd position held by Trump supporters, both in the Trump inner cantos and in the deplorable swamps, that there is nothing to see here has lost yet another crutch. Not only is Manafort guilty, but he has something to say to Mueller. About something.

To save the planet, this is what we have to do everywhere, all the time.

Energy, Technology, , ,

A huge amount of energy is spent going to the store. The grocery store, the hardware store, all the stores. The amount of energy spent to get an object to the store for you to buy is big, but this process is on average highly efficient. A train can hold a lot of objects, and pushing a train down the tracks is highly efficient. Also, we will hopefully eventually be running trains entirely on a combination of electricity delivered to the train indirectly, batteries, and bio-fueled generators on board. Delivering object for you to buy at the store is already efficient, but it will become more efficient with a relatively small number of (big) step.

But then everybody leaves their home and drives various distances to various stores. When I was a kid, there were two grocery stores in our neighborhood. One had no parking lot, the other had room for about five or six cars, but nobody drove to either one. We used those two wheel carts you drag along to the store (or laundromat). When you get to the grocery store, you fold the cart up and hook it to a push car, then, when you pack up your groceries, they go in that two wheeler and you drag it home. Everybody did that all the time. It was strange to drive your car to the grocery store.

I remember when my parents started to drive to get groceries. Instead of going to the store on foot (or more likely, sending one of the offspring to the store with a list), they would drive out to the edge of town to a large warehouse discount store that had sprung up, like a Cosco. Oddly, large suburban style grocery stores emerged, in my world, after these edge-of-town discount store. My parents would drive the station wagon out there, spend all day, come back and and fill the freezer and cupboards. Maybe once every six weeks. In between times, for milk and other perishables that you can’t freeze, it would be walking to the A&P. So that was all pretty efficient.

But today, tens of millions of Americans get in a car and drive a few miles to pick up some object or bunch of objects at the stores. The energy spent to do that is large. The total amount of energy we spend going to the store to get objects is probably less than the total amount of energy spent to get objects from producers (via warehouses) to stores, but not by as much as you might think.

One way to solve this is to not go to the store in a car and by an object. Order it on line. The delivery will be more efficient. Or, in some cases, go to the store on foot, bike, or public transit, get your your stuff in a big pile, and then have the store deliver it to your house. And, have all the delivery done by electric vehicles charged with energy produced without fossil carbon.

I envision a future in which we abandon mail boxes and replace them with small rooms with an indoor and outdoor access, some insulation and modest climate control, a place to put frozen stuff, refrigerator stuff, other stuff. That’s where the grocery store delivery service drops your stuff.

Or, if you are in need of new flat packed furniture, Ikea:

In a couple of years, if you buy a Malm bed at Ikea in Brooklyn and opt for delivery, Ikea will probably drop it off in an electric truck. The company is transitioning to zero-emissions delivery in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Paris, and Shanghai by 2020. By 2025, Ikea aims to do the same for every store worldwide.

“Climate change is no longer just a threat, but it’s a reality,” says Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ikea Group. “We see how that impacts our business, our customers, and our coworkers more or less everyday . . . We want to be a leader, and take action, and speed up our plans.”

The company had announced earlier this year that it would shift to zero-emissions delivery by 2025, but now plans to work more quickly in key cities.

But where do you get one of those nice delivery receiving futuristic mail boxes with the climate control?

Here you go:

Manafort cops a plea?

Politics

It appears that felon and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has struck some sort of plea deal with Marine Veteran and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

This would get Mueller out of going through another trial.

It may be that Manafort has simply pleaded guilty on the charges he is up for, or it may be that he’s cooperating in some way in order to get a reduced sentence for the eight felonies he was found guilty of last month and a good deal on the upcoming charges. In theory, we will find out Friday when the deal is read in court. Or sooner if it leaks.

Rise: a poetry expedition to Greenland’s melting glaciers

Climate Change, ,

Climate activists and poets, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and Aka Niviana, travel to the latter’s home of Greenland to recite their collaborative poem, Rise, on a melting glacier that might threaten the former’s home nation of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific

For background, see this post at Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

See also this related post by Bill McKibben.

Florence, Hurricanes and Climate Change

Climate Change, Severe Weather and Other Disasters, , ,

It is never too soon to talk about human caused climate change in relation to hurricanes. This is a bed we made and we are now sleeping in it.

Rather than yammering on and on about how a warmer atmosphere is a damper, but also more evaporation-inducing (and thus drying), and energetic atmosphere, and about how warmer air going over warmer sea water produces more and bigger storms globally, and all that, I’ll point you to some resources below.

But first I want to address two misconceptions: 1) that you can never attribute to a particular storm the effects of climate change THIS IS FALSE and 2) that climate scientists believe that Atlantic hurricanes will become less and less of a problem with climate change THIS IS ALSO FALSE.

On the attribution. Let’s say there is a disease with a 50% mortality rate. But then a treatment is invented that reduces that to zero. We use the treatment widely and nobody dies of it any more. Then, you get the disease, are cured, and go on a public speaking tour in which you espouse the greatness of this cure.

But one night, while you are speaking in front of a large audience, someone stands up and says, “Hey, wait one darn minute there! You might have been one of the 50% that would have lived! You can’t say that this cure did ANYTHING. Faker!”

The audience, realizing that the cure does not actually work, stands up and walks out.

Was that fair? Was what just happened in this scenario a honest, thoughtful turn of events?

With climate change it is a little like that. People who want to deny the importance of climate change, including journalists still stuck in the false balance mode (if there are Senators in the Senate claiming that human caused global warming is a hoax, then we must consider that as equally likely as what all the world’s scientists are saying), pull the attribution rabbit out of the hat all the time. Since you can’t yada yada. Even some climate scientists used to say this because the were badly trained in what to say.

Indeed, the binary (cure/not cured) I gave you above is not really like climate change. The fact that ALL the sea surfaces in the tropics and sub tropics — every single square centimeter — are on average (and in fact most of the time, for most of the seconds of most of the days, all year) anomalously warm, all of the tropical weather systems are affected all of the time. Fail to understand that at your peril.

The second falsehood, that Atlantic hurricanes will become less of a problem, is perhaps even more pernicious. There once was a study that seemed to show that some of the climatic conditions that would attenuate tropical cyclones, denying them the chance to form into hurricanes, would become more common in the Atlantic. This is probably true. However, the climatic conditions that cause tropical storms to form and advance to hurricane stage are also increased — different effects — and these effects have the added bonus of causing hurricanes to form much more rapidly and sometimes (perhaps often) grow much larger and, by the way, exist farther north. Indeed, if Florence does reach Category 5 for a short time today or tomorrow, it will be the farthest north Cat 5 hurricane ever in the Atlantic.

Here’s the thing. We will see periods of time when hurricanes that might have formed, say, 20 years ago, won’t. But we will also see periods of time when more and bigger and worser hurricanes form. The actual average number of hurricanes in the Atlantic has not gone down, but rather, stayed fairly stable, over recent decades. The frequency of large and dangerous hurricanes globally has gone up, and that trend is probably observable in the Atlantic.

Point is, we are not seeing a decrease in Atlantic hurricane activity or impressiveness, and we are seeing records being broken with respect to time to formation, size, strength, etc.

Climate Signals has a page on Hurricane Florence. They point out that sea level rise and coastal storms are a significant coastal erosion threat. warmer waters make for more and bigger hurricanes, keeping the hurricanes big longer, and making them form faster. These hurricanes are wetter.

Indeed, we have replaced the term “Biblical Flooding” with “Harvey Size Flooding” since we no longer have to imagine it.

Here is a helpful video:

This graph showing the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane activity.

Finally, an interview with Michael Mann, author of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, on Florence in which Mann points out ways in which climate modeling predicted greater severity of hurricanes. That set of predictions included, by the way, an increased tendency for Atlantic hurricanes to hit the US:

Cheap books: Inside Scientology, Guns of August

Other

Two items I know many of you have been planning to read someday, currently cheap on Kindle:
Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige, was raised as a Scientologist but left the controversial religion in 2005. In Beyond Belief, she shares her true story of life inside the upper ranks of the sect, details her experiences as a member Sea Org—the church’s highest ministry, speaks of her “disconnection” from family outside of the organization, and tells the story of her ultimate escape.

In this tell-all memoir, complete with family photographs from her time in the Church, Jenna Miscavige Hill, a prominent critic of Scientology who now helps others leave the organization, offers an insider’s profile of the beliefs, rituals, and secrets of the religion that has captured the fascination of millions, including some of Hollywood’s brightest stars such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I; Barbara W. Tuchman’s Great War Series (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books)

In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.

What about all those Nuke Plants in Florence’s Path?

Uncategorized

The US Southeast has a lot of nuke plants. Like this:

Operating Nuclear Power Plants in the US Southeast, courtesy of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It is highly unlikely that a direct hit from the most energetic part of a hurricane would affect a nuclear power plant, as they are very well built. I don’t know what major flooding would do for any given plant. I suspect that most or all nuclear power plants in the region are not as well protected from floods ad they need to be, since a typical year now has flooding that no one ever thought would occur commonly. With climate change, 100-year and 500-year floods happen a couple of times a decade in some areas, and the hypercharged hurricanes we now have, with Houston style flooding (see how “Houston” replaces “Biblical” since we no longer have to imagine the epic flooding!), I think we simply don’t know what will happen at nuclear plants affected by three foot rainfalls in their upper catchments.

The biggest and most likely problem with nuclear plans is this. They need to be cooled. Cooling normally happens when they are operating and producing energy. But when the distribution and transmission grids they serve are obliterated, the plants have to shut down since they can’t send electricity out. They then have to cool themselves using alternative fuels. (I’m oversimplifying a great deal here but I assume people will chime in with plenty of distracting details).

Many, perhaps all, nuke plants in the US Southeast have over recent years (since the Fukushima disaster) upgraded their alternate cooling plans, which mainly involves big generators and supplies of liquid fuel for them.

This weekend may be the test of those upgrades.

Florence, Details, and Stupification Warning!

Severe Weather and Other Disasters

Hurricane Florence has strengthened as expected. There will likely be some more strengthening, followed by some weakening near the coast. Florence will remain a major and deadly hurricane until after landfall, and then, it will be a deadly flood causing storm with significant winds.

Timing

The best estimate for timing of events is as follows.

On Wednesday morning, Hurricane Florence will likely be looming just off the Carolina coast, with winds of about 140 mph (making it a Category 4 Hurricane).

Tropical storm strength winds will come ashore Wednesday night. Strong surf will have already developed.

The strongest part of Florence will be pounding the Carolina coast at sunup on Friday, and the storm may sit right on the coast for several hours as it winds down to a tropical storm. Landfall and this rapid weakening may happen at about the same time. It is remotely possible that the eye wall will not pass over the coast, thus causing weather reporters and climate disaster deniers to become stupified.

Storm surge

It is important to understand how storm surge warnings work. There are two kinds of estimates that can be made. One is to assume exactly where the eye will come ashore, exactly when (to include the contribution of tieds), estimate the wind speed and forward speed of the storm, and the angle of movement, then use all these variable together with the topography of the coast to estimate how high flooding will be at any given point.

The second is to look at where the storm may go, and how strong it might be, and how those other variables will pan out, but with uncertainty in location and timing being much larger, and produce a map of coastal regions indicating where there might be high flooding, and how high that might be.

The former is generally not what you are looking at when you see a storm surge map. For example, right now there are estimated storm surges of over 9 feet near Kinston and Greenfille North Carolina, but only one foot in and around Albermarle sound. This is based on a combination of the likely track and behavior of the storm but considering that we don’t know exactly where the storm is going to hit. The difference between Greenville and Albermarle sound is a combination of where we think the storm is going and what the storm might do. The two topographies are greatly different, accounting for most of the difference in possible flood height.

In other words, most of the flood levels indicated in most storm surge maps are not going to happen. Only some of them. But, we don’t know which ones.

Anyway, there are storm surges expected to be greater than 9 feet in some places. Even three foot surges are a lot if it is high tide along very low lying barrier islands. If Florence does plow into North Carolina as expected, it is quite likely that the configuration of the barrier islands along that coast will change. Some lines may become dotted lines. Some inlets may be filled, some new inlets created, many tidal channels in the estuaries will shift. Places like the town of Ocracoke may suffer very sever damage, as they lie below the maximum possible food surge.

Flooding

Aside from storm surge, flooding happens inland with hurricanes. The special feature of East Coast hurricanes, especially in “Hurricane Alley”, between Northern Georgia and southern Virginia, is that behind the coastal plain there is a mountain range. So, if tropical storm carried water dumps on that mountain range, a two or three inch rainfall over a very large area can cause significant flooding.

Rainfall of over four inches is expected to fall over most of Virginia, and about half of North Carolina. Delaware, DC, Delmarva, Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, and parts of West Virginia and South Carolina will also get lots of rain. The area of expected landfall, and a few areas in land (like in south-Central Virginia) may see rainfall totals of over 15 inches, maybe two feet right along the coast.

A lot of roads and bridges will be wiped out, immortal doods in large pickups will be obviated, and low lying villages will be flooded. Unless the storm does a zany (and very unlikely) turn to the north before coming ashore, this may be the biggest problem, since it is hard to evacuate five or six states.

Washington DC could get up to a foot of rain. Note: The White House lies on much lower terrain than the Capitol. I’m not promising you a Rose Garden flood, but it could happen.

What if

Florence is just like any other storm of the day: Enhanced by global warming. But note this. Florence will weaken from a strong Category 4 storm to a strong Category 3 storm as it gets near the coast. This will happen because the warm waters on the surface will be churned by the storm itself into the colder water at depth, weakening the storm. Over recent years, however, we’ve seen storms fail to weaken, or even strengthen when they would normally have weakened, because the deeper water is still at “hurricane-strength” temperature. Katrina, Haiyan, and some of last year’s Atlantic storms exhibited this behavior.

With increased warming of the sea, this will eventually start to happen in the US East Coast littoral. Florence ten or twenty years from now would build to Category 5 strength and keep that level of intensity, or nearly, before reaching the shore. And, in ten or twenty years from now, sea levels will be higher. And, by then, a few other hurricanes would have smashed up the barrier islands. In 20 years, North Carolina and Virginia are not likely to be very well protected by those sand features. James Hansen was right.

Florence Likely To Hit US, Maybe In The Carolinas

Uncategorized

Florence, now a hurricane for the second time, is a strengthening hurricane likely to affect the US east coast south of New York and north of Central Florida, where tropical force winds may arrive by late Wednesday. The exact area to be affected is not yet known. Florence is likely to be a very strong hurricane.

There are now very few models that show Hurricane Florence not hitting the east coast of the US.

Florence is fairly likely to come ashore on the east coast somewhere between the Georgia-South Carolina border, north of Savannah, and Chesapeake Bay south of the Maryland-Virginia border. The current bull’s eye is near Wilmington North Carolina.

If the storm turns way to the north, regions including Maryland and Southern Delaware would likely be affected. If the storm turns way to the south, regions in Georgia would be affected. In all cases, how far the storm heads inland, over what time, and now wet it is, will have an impact on interior flooding, which is very likely to be be significant.

The storm surge near the point of landfill is expected to be significant.

Almost all Atlantic hurricanes reach a maximum strength while still at sea, then slow down a bit as they head inland. I believe this is in part because the warmest waters are usually a bit off shore, as well as other factors. Florence will be passing over waters that are quite a bit warmer than normal, due to global warming. It may also be the case that those waters are warm at depth, a feature of climate change that enhances storms. So, we can expect Florence to become a very strong storm, then reduce in strength to be merely a very strong storm.

In other words, there will be breathless reporting that a Category Four storm is heading for the US but the US will actually be hit by a strong Category 3 storm. Don’t be fooled that this storm is not going to be powerful.

One of the things Florence is likely to do is to curve northward as it approaches the bulging Carolina coast. The exact angle at which the storm makes landfall, and the exact location, will make the difference between a very bad hurricane and an epic disaster the likes of which have not been seen since whenever. The front right quadrant of the storm could push a huge storm surge into a restricting estuary with a city on it. One way or another, someone’s gonna lose themselves some barrier island.

Timing

By late evening Wednesday or a bit later, tropical storm force winds are likely to be on shore somewhere along the east coast. That will make being at the beach dangerous, and damage from winds and waves will commence here and there.

Early in the morning on Thursday, September 13th, Florence will be off shore and close enough to be having a strong effect on land. At that point we’ll know a lot more about where the most dangerous places to be are, but evacuations will have hopefuly already been started over a larger area. By the next morning, Friday, Florence will likely have made landfall somewhere. Starting in the wee hours of the morning on Friday and extending for the next few days, inland flooding will be severe, somewhere.

However, the forward speed of the storm can change quite a bit, so maybe this will all happen a bit earlier. Or later.

Estimates of intensity show the storm peaking in about 96 hours at 125 knots (144 mph), putting Florence in the middle of the Category 4 range. There is a very good chance the storm will be just transitioning from Category 4 to strong Category 3 at about the time of landfall.

The National Hurricane Center says:

There is an increasing risk of two life-threatening impacts from Florence: storm surge at the coast and freshwater flooding from a prolonged heavy rainfall event inland. While it is too soon to determine the exact timing, location, and magnitude of these impacts, interests at the coast and inland from South Carolina into the mid-Atlantic region should closely monitor the progress of Florence, ensure they have their hurricane plan in place, and follow any advice given by local officials.

FORECAST POSITIONS AND MAX WINDS

INIT 09/1500Z 24.4N 56.3W 65 KT 75 MPH
12H 10/0000Z 24.5N 57.4W 80 KT 90 MPH
24H 10/1200Z 24.9N 59.3W 95 KT 110 MPH
36H 11/0000Z 25.6N 61.7W 105 KT 120 MPH
48H 11/1200Z 26.4N 64.5W 120 KT 140 MPH
72H 12/1200Z 29.0N 70.8W 125 KT 145 MPH
96H 13/1200Z 32.2N 75.8W 120 KT 140 MPH
120H 14/1200Z 35.0N 78.5W 85 KT 100 MPH…INLAND

Florence

Severe Weather and Other Disasters

Spaghetti is as what spaghetti does. At this time, the spaghetti models — that’s what we call the collection of lines emanating out from the location of an existing storm showing many possible future tracks based on many different models — show the Atlantic storm known as Florence coming perilously close to the US.

However, all of these models have the storm still a couple days minimum from hitting something (if it hits something) FIVE DAYS in the future. The collection of models suggesting a tropical storm or hurricane’s track are very accurate, at the level of something the size of a US state, for a couple/few days. Five days out is a long way to predict. If Florence were to hit the US coast, it would be in perhaps six days from now or later.

There is a very high probability that the storm will turn right, north, and entirely avoid the US.

The full range of possible landfalls IF if makes landfall runs from Miami to New Jersey.

So, it is undoubtedly too soon to say anything clear about Florence.

Nonetheless there are two things that compel me two write this premature post. First, the major media are starting to report Florence. I assume this is in part because the Atlantic Hurricane season has been quiet so far and weather-oriented reporters and editors are getting jumpy. I know I am.

The other reason is more important. Just as there are many predicted tracks that have Florence hitting the US, there are also predictions of Florence being rather strong. Most of the intensity predictions suggest that in about 100 to 120 hours from now, the storm will reach Category 3 or possibly Category 4 status.

So, if this is going to be a thing, it might be a big thing.

The intensity predictions don’t say what happens after that, and it is not uncommon for a Category 4 storm out in the middle of the ocean to weaken before it gets near land. So, the news headlines will read “Category Five Storm Heading For Virginia” while what is really happening is “Category Five Storm Will Weaken To Category 3 Storm Before Maybe Hitting Virginia.” The breathless over reporting of strength is dangerous, because the actual Category 3 storm is bad enough, still a major hurricane. But if everyone hears “The Cat Five Weakened to a Cat Three” all they may see is the word “weakened.”

When will we know if Florence is going to hit land? Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Stay tuned.