[MCN] Do atmospheric rivers have any effect on western Montana?

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpts : “Across the 11 western conterminous states, from 1978 to 2017, we find that total estimated flood damages, during all seasons, amounted to $50.8 billion, and ARs accounted for 84% of these damages, i.e., $42.6 billion, or roughly $1.1 billion a year.”

“In the coastal states of California, Oregon, and Washington, the proportions of total insured flood damages attributable to ARs exceeded 99% in some areas (Fig. 2 and Table 2). Relatively high proportions of damages were associated with AR activity as far east as 100°W, including much of Arizona, Idaho, and western Montana— inland regions where ARs are known to penetrate “

Thomas W. Corringham, F. Martin Ralph, Alexander Gershunov, Daniel R. Cayan, Cary A. Talbot. Atmospheric rivers drive flood damages in the western United States. Science Advances, 4 December 2019 

<<https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/12/eaax4631.full.pdf <https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/12/eaax4631.full.pdf>>>

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 “I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades.”

“There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.” 

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/ <https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/>

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A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate sets out the situation well enough. 

A team including the likes of Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen, Veerabhadren Ramathan, Johan Rockstrom, Marten Scheffer and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber begin the abstract of their article by saying “Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced …”  

They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”

Their analysis is echoed across the scientists side of the situation. But it doesn’t take a scientist to get the drift of what’s going on. 

Liam Denning is former investment banker, former editor of one of the Wall Street Journal’s most closely read columns —Heard on the Street — and a former columnist for Financial Times. Writing about the Green New Deal for Bloomberg, Denning has come to the conclusion that, “We have built our standard of living on forms of energy that we now know pose a threat to our very existence,” and that, “this is a conversation that is long overdue — and necessarily begins with a shout, not a whisper.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/>






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