Historical Perspective – Charles Samuels
Many people think that global warming is causing record storms, stronger hurricanes, floods and drought. If you Google “global warming causes storms” you get 498,000 hits. Of course it is absolute nonsense. Here are some facts, gleaned from Wikipedia, that document historical disasters that are far worse than anything we have seen in recent years.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on September 8, 1900, in Galveston, Texas, in the United States. It had estimated winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. It was the deadliest hurricane in US history, and the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history based on the dollar's 2005 value (to compare costs with those of Hurricane Katrina and others).
The hurricane caused great loss of life with the death of between 6,000 and 12,000 people; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. The second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, caused more than 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.
The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, unleashing 20 million tons of water (18 million cubic meters) from the reservoir known as Lake Conemaugh. With a flow rate that temporarily equaled that of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,209 people and caused US$17 million of damage (about $425 million in 2012 dollars).
The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak was a series of 33 tornadoes, over a three day period, occurring in 10 different U.S. States. Tornadoes appeared daily, from May 9 to May 11, 1953, from Minnesota in the north to Texas in the south. The strongest (F5 on the Fujita scale) and deadliest (114 of the 144 deaths) was the tornado that struck Waco, Texas on Monday May 11.
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–40, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years,
Drought apparently struck what is now the American Southwest back in the 13th century, which may have affected the Pueblo cities, and tree rings also document drought in the lower and central Mississippi River basin between the 14th and 16th century. The droughts of that period may have contributed to the decline and fall of the Mississippian cultures.
The 18th century seems to have been a relatively wet century in North America, but there were apparently droughts in Iowa in 1721, 1736, and from 1771 to 1773.
There were at least three major droughts in nineteenth century North America: one from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, one in the 1870s, and one in the 1890s. There was also a drought around 1820; the periods from 1816 to 1844 and from 1849 to 1880 were rather dry, and the 19th century overall was a dry century for the Great Plains. While there was little rain-gauge data from the mid-19th century in the middle of the US, there were plenty of trees, and tree-ring data showed evidence of a major drought from around 1856 to around 1865. Native Americans were hard hit, as the bison they depended upon on the Plains moved to river valleys in search of water, and those valleys were full of Natives and settlers alike. The river valleys were also home to the humans' grazing animals, which competed against the bison for food. The result was starvation for many of the bison.
San Jose Mercury News: “……Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe mega-droughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.”
Many people think that global warming is causing record storms, stronger hurricanes, floods and drought. If you Google “global warming causes storms” you get 498,000 hits. Of course it is absolute nonsense. Here are some facts, gleaned from Wikipedia, that document historical disasters that are far worse than anything we have seen in recent years.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on September 8, 1900, in Galveston, Texas, in the United States. It had estimated winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. It was the deadliest hurricane in US history, and the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history based on the dollar's 2005 value (to compare costs with those of Hurricane Katrina and others).
The hurricane caused great loss of life with the death of between 6,000 and 12,000 people; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. The second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, caused more than 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.
The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, unleashing 20 million tons of water (18 million cubic meters) from the reservoir known as Lake Conemaugh. With a flow rate that temporarily equaled that of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,209 people and caused US$17 million of damage (about $425 million in 2012 dollars).
The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak was a series of 33 tornadoes, over a three day period, occurring in 10 different U.S. States. Tornadoes appeared daily, from May 9 to May 11, 1953, from Minnesota in the north to Texas in the south. The strongest (F5 on the Fujita scale) and deadliest (114 of the 144 deaths) was the tornado that struck Waco, Texas on Monday May 11.
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–40, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years,
Drought apparently struck what is now the American Southwest back in the 13th century, which may have affected the Pueblo cities, and tree rings also document drought in the lower and central Mississippi River basin between the 14th and 16th century. The droughts of that period may have contributed to the decline and fall of the Mississippian cultures.
The 18th century seems to have been a relatively wet century in North America, but there were apparently droughts in Iowa in 1721, 1736, and from 1771 to 1773.
There were at least three major droughts in nineteenth century North America: one from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, one in the 1870s, and one in the 1890s. There was also a drought around 1820; the periods from 1816 to 1844 and from 1849 to 1880 were rather dry, and the 19th century overall was a dry century for the Great Plains. While there was little rain-gauge data from the mid-19th century in the middle of the US, there were plenty of trees, and tree-ring data showed evidence of a major drought from around 1856 to around 1865. Native Americans were hard hit, as the bison they depended upon on the Plains moved to river valleys in search of water, and those valleys were full of Natives and settlers alike. The river valleys were also home to the humans' grazing animals, which competed against the bison for food. The result was starvation for many of the bison.
San Jose Mercury News: “……Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe mega-droughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.”