A year of extreme weather events

Useful but hard-to-face list published today in the Guardian:

A year of US disasters – 2011 so far

• Hurricane Irene, August 20-29. Over $7bn and around 50 deaths.

• Upper Midwest flooding. The Missouri and Souris rivers overflowed in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. Damages: $2bn.

• Mississippi river flooding, spring and summer. Damages neared $4bn.

• Drought and heatwave in Texas, Oklahoma. Over $5bn.

• Tornadoes in midwest and south-east in May kill 177 and cost more than $7bn in losses.

• Tornadoes in the Ohio Valley, south-east and midwest on April devastate the city of Tuscaloosa, kill 32 and cause more than $9bn in damages.

• Tornadoes hit from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania 14–16 April. Toll: $2bn in damages.

• 59 tornadoes in midwest and north-east April 8-11. Damages: $2.2bn.

• 46 tornadoes in central and southern states 4 and 5 April. Toll: $2.3bn in damages.

• Blizzard late January paralyse cities from Chicago to the north-east. Toll: 36 deaths and more than $2bn in damages.

Of course, all this was carefully predicted. See the table on page eight of the 2007 IPPC FAR Summary for Policymakers.

www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf

And the 2006 Stern Review stated that we should invest about 1% of GDP per annum now in measures to control emissions to avoid much larger GDP reductions of 5 to 20 percent per annum later in the century.

How much longer before we all come to our senses?