The fact people who should know better still equate Katrina with “Climate Change” shows how emotionally attached they are to their dogma. A few decades ago I think this was called brainwashing…

It’s a good thing Dr. Curry suggests no such thing, Indur. You’re kind of like a climate version of John Yoo, aren’t you?

I don’t understand how this can serve as a wakeup call now when category 4 storms of the 1930s occured with more frequency.

Second, if Hurricane Katrina served as a “wake up call” to the American public that storms might become more destructive because of global warming, then it’s waking up to the wrong alarm. Yes, we are awake, but we are headed to the wrong appointment. It’s as if we should be headed for our SAT exams, rather than for a workout in the gym. Hurricane Katrina, and the damage it wrought, had more to do with human failings – and the failure of the levees – than any intensification due to climate change (as Kenneth V aptly notes elsewhere). If 100 years ago, we had stopped any increases in CO2 emissions and all else stayed as it was in 2005, the levees would still have failed and the inhabitants of New Orleans would still have suffered the same tragedy. On the other hand, reinforcing the levees and/or more timely evacuation of the residents of the city – both adaptations rather than emission limitations – would have reduced the death and destruction.

Third, the discussion regarding climate change and what to do about it seems to be oblivious to the fact that the world — and the US — face numerous problems in addition to climate change. [This is the climate-change-uber-alles fallacy.] Putting resources into addressing one problem, means that much fewer resources for addressing others. This normally wouldn’t be as much of a problem, if the magnitude of resources involved were trivial, but if they were indeed trivial they wouldn’t be an issue now.

Regarding Andrew Dessler’s post, there are a few more questions that one should ask in addition to those he (and Mark) list. They include the following:
• What will be our adaptive capacity 100 years hence, and how likely will it be that we’ll utilize it? This, in my estimate, was the major failing regarding Hurricane Katrina. We had the adaptive capacity to reduce death and destruction significantly had the levees been reinforced or evacuation been more efficient, but we failed to do so. Reducing GHG emissions would not guarantee against such human/social/institutional failures.
• How much will adaptation cost and how much will that reduce hurricane impacts?
• Another question, which follows from the third point noted above, is: What are the opportunity costs of trying to reduce hurricane damages by attacking GHG emissions rather than through adaptation?

Regarding the missile defense system, I would presume similar questions were asked and answered at least qualitatively, before any one proceeded with the system. If no one did, or if we went ahead with the system despite getting unfavorable answers to those questions, then clearly we did something dumb. In any case, whether we do a dumb thing once – or for that matter, several times — shouldn’t condemn us to doing other dumb things in perpetuity. In other words, it’s never too late to try to improve our process of developing and analyzing policy options.

Nevertheless, I note that while adaptation to hurricanes will address only the hurricane/coastal flooding issue, limiting GHG emissions would address the many other problems that climate change may contribute to or cause. In essence, it may be argued that reducing climate change is akin to killing several birds with one stone. Despite this inherent advantage, I have shown in a paper titled, “A
Climate Policy for the Short and Medium Term: Stabilization or
Adaptation?”, that in the short-to-medium term, reducing the vulnerability to current climate-sensitive problems (e.g., hurricanes) that might be exacerbated by climate change is likely to be more cost-effective than any mitigation or, for that matter, reducing vulnerability only to the impacts of climate change. [This analysis doesn’t take into consideration climate surprises; but that’s another story.]

Three fundamental reasons contribute to this result (discussed below, for brevity’s sake, in the context of hurricanes). First as Dr. Curry suggests, emission reductions will have little or no impact on climate change in the short-to-medium term. However, we can reduce vulnerability substantially over this time frame. Second, reducing vulnerability to hurricanes in general is a holistic approach to the problem since it addresses the contribution of both climate change and non-climate-change-related factors (such as current climate and climate variability) to the hurricane problem. By contrast, emission reductions would, at best, only address that portion of the hurricane problem due to climate change. Thus, reducing vulnerability to hurricanes in general would be addressing a larger problem than would any reduction in climate change. Third, technologies, practices, systems and institutions that would reduce vulnerability to hurricanes today will all help reduce vulnerability to hurricanes tomorrow, whether or not they are more frequent, intense or of greater duration because of climate change.

In summary, while in the long term mitigation may be unavoidable, in the short-to-medium term it is likely to be ineffective. For that we need adaptation. Moreover, as the numbers in Dr. Curry’s post suggest, we can wait a few decades before irrevocably committing ourselves to a course for the long term.

Also why acting on future threat is more important than adapt to present threat?

http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/08/katrina_was_an_engineering_cat.php

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000844climate_change_is_a_.html

For more on the politics of adaptation see:

Pielke, Jr., R.A., 2005. Misdefining ‘‘climate change’’: consequences for science and action, Environmental Science & Policy, Vol. 8, pp. 548-561.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1841-2004.10.pdf