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Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
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2 Sep, 12 tweets, 5 min read
Remarkable detail about NYC infrastructure:
Sewer system designed to accommodate a 5-year storm, one with a 20% chance of occurring in any year

Like the Texas freeze, events are exposing poor infrastructure & limited capacity to deal with rare events

www1.nyc.gov/assets/em/down… Image
Flooding in NYC is highly correlated with sewer infrastructure (look at Queens)
mdpi.com/2073-4441/9/10… Image
Honestly, if I am a NY politician, given these facts, all I'd be talking about is climate change
No one in NYC gov't should be surprised by flooding

Hamidi et al 2018. Uncertainty analysis of urban sewer system using spatial simulation of radar rainfall fields: New York City case study. SERRA 32:2293-2308.
link.springer.com/article/10.100… Image
NY and NJ are hotspots for inland flooding from tropical cyclones

Villarini et al 2014. North Atlantic tropical cyclones and US flooding. BAMS 95:1381-1388.
journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/… Image
NYC days with rainfall >4in 1900 to 2010
A >4in rainfall in one day was a 1 in ~3 year event in NYC
New York City Panel on Climate Change 2010 Report
nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… Image
"Extreme rainfall measured at Central Park has
significant year-to-year variation such that no statistically significant trends in extreme rainfall can be
identified (Horton et al., 2015)"
New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report
researchgate.net/profile/Jorge-…
The effects of climate change on extreme precip were said to be not detectable in the 2020s, in NYC Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report

So if this week's floods show clear fingerprints of climate change, then the mayor of New York is right to say that this event was unexpected Image
Interestingly the current NYC Storm Water Resiliency Plan discusses plans for an extreme rainfall event of 3.5 inches falling in 1 hour 9this week say 3.15 in one hour), which it defines with a return period of 100 yrs
www1.nyc.gov/assets/orr/pdf… Image
So there are mixed messages here

A. This week's storm was the result of climate change - in which case policy makers were not warned

B. This week's storm was a ~100-yr flood indistinguishable from natural variability, in which case policy makers were unprepared

Pick one
For politicians, there's obvious incentives to pick A

For activist scientists trying to sell the NYC flood as a reason for broader emissions policy, a collateral effect is to provide cover for politicians who dropped the ball in local NYC flood/stormwater policy & infrastructure
Why NYC Is Still So Unprepared For Flash Floods wnyc.org/story/why-nyc-… via @WNYC

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More from @RogerPielkeJr

Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
12 Sep
This is so incredibly wrong

Storm surge is a function of a storm and the current sea level

Long-term sea level rise of course raises the level of the sea but has absolutely no effect on storm surge from a particular storm

🤷‍♂️
I increasingly see the claim that SLR makes storm surge worse

This is incorrect

It’s like saying a 6 ft man is 5,286 ft tall in Denver

SLR & storm surge are both important scientific concepts, purposely confusing them is a bad idea
Even as SLR has increased over the past century+ societal vulnerability to storm surges has decreased, there is no reason to expect that with dedicated effort this trend will not continue
Read 6 tweets
Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
10 Sep
Another FACT CHECK 🧵

The World Is Getting Safer From Floods by @WSJOpinion @BjornLomborg wsj.com/articles/flood… via @WSJOpinion
Is this claim by @BjornLomborg in the @WSJ correct?
"the relative toll that floods take on the U.S.—in property and lives—has decreased over time"

Yes it is
Figure below is updated from Downton et al 2005 doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)…

The decline is huge (this data starts 1940)
In terms of flood deaths in the US death has decreased in term of both

Absolute numbers--> weather.gov/media/hazstat/…

And death rates (per capita)--> ourworldindata.org/natural-disast…

Similar to most disaster mortality trends
Read 8 tweets
Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
9 Sep
FACT CHECK🧵

Hurricane Ida Isn’t the Whole Story on Climate by @BjornLomborg wsj.com/articles/hurri… via @WSJOpinion
In the @WSJ @BjornLomborg uses our analyses of hurricane landfalls to argue that "the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900"

Can that be true?

Yes it is

Figure below updated from: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/…
Well what about major US hurricanes. After all they cause >85% of all damage.
No they haven't increased either

Also updated from @philklotzbach et al 2018
Read 10 tweets
Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
8 Sep
It’s true, I’ve lived it⬇️

The Targeting of Scholars for Ideological Reasons from 2015 to Present

Scholars Under Fire – Full Text thefire.org/research/publi… via @TheFIREorg
I doubt I'm actually in @TheFIREorg database
My experiences highlighted below

We can add to those
➡️Targeted by the White House
➡️Investigated by Congress
➡️Investigated on campus
➡️Seen all four successful initiatives I created/led on campus shut down
➡️and more 🤓

I ❤️ tenure
I applaud @TheFIREorg for calling attention to these issues for scholars, which come from the right & from the left

They are incredibly difficult to experience & talk about

I'm stubborn/dumb/tenured & have made it thru the worst of it

But for many there are much worse outcomes
Read 4 tweets
Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
7 Sep
How to trick a president with poor data practices

➡️Trump issued zero statewide disaster declarations for weather/climate events 2017-2020
➡️Biden has already issued 8 statewide declarations in 2021

Of course more people are covered by declarations in 2021
Did every single person in these states experience a disaster? Each of these states received a statewide disaster declaration in 2021

WA
MT
CA
WA
TN
MO
NY
NE

If not then this headline is wrong

Pro tip: Federal Disaster Declarations reflect presidential politics + disasters
A lie is born
1-"More than 32% of Americans live in a county or state that has been declared a disaster area by FEMA"
2-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past 3 months"
3-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer"
Read 7 tweets
Roger Pielke Jr. Profile picture
6 Sep
An accurate relative risk assessment?

“The risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any single disease” ⁦@DrTedros⁩ ⁦@WHO⁩

COVID-19* deaths in ~2 years = 15.3 million ⁦@TheEconomist⁩
*much worse pandemics are possible
bmj.com/content/374/bm…
IPCC WG2 yet to report but any support for the claim that climate change could cause 7.5 million deaths per year, or 15m total?

Deaths from weather and climate have plummeted over many decades and now total <50,000 per year

Will they increase by 150x because climate change?
Let’s just take as true the @WHO estimate of “climate change deaths” - 5 million over 20 years

COVID-19 resulted in 15m deaths in 2 years

Efforts to maximalize climate change at the expense of minimizing pandemic threat seems both wrong & unnecessary

who.int/news-room/fact…
Read 7 tweets

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