The common refrain is "nothing like this ever happened before." We are in for escalating climate related disasters if we don't rapidly curtail our CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. FEMA is getting beyond its ability to respond, along with the Red Cross.

But there are scientific explanations for some of this. In Louisiana, Army Corps of Engineers flood relief in the form of levees on the Mississippi has reduced flooding and the subsequent silt deposits that built much of lower Louisiana. Without those annual silt deposits, storms have been claiming more and more of southern Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico every year. As a result of Ida, some areas, like Grand Isle, have been declared uninhabitable.

In the West, agriculture has used most of the water from free-flowing rivers. The pine bark beetle has killed vast forests throughout the region, creating dry firewood for fires. And rigid fire control as allowed underbrush to grow under the trees in many areas where grass fires and wildlife would naturally remove it.

These kinds of storms will continue to grow as long as we engage in bad habits for short-term profit and personal convenience.

Ron