Reducing CO2 Emissions Is Not a Useful Substitute for Effective Stormwater Management

Hurricane Harvey has undoubtedly caused great damage to Houston and surrounding areas on the Texas Coast. The climate alarmists have immediately tried to blame carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted by humans, of course.

My comment is that if the US had devoted the resources wasted on CO₂-oriented climate research and building “renewable” sources of energy on decreasing the vulnerability of the Texas Gulf Coast to floods the US would have been far far better off. The Houston area has had problems with floods since it was founded and has apparently not implemented the needed stormwater management measures and/or imposed building restrictions to alleviate these problems to the extent needed, let alone prevent them. As a result of a very major flood in 1935 they formed a flood control district, but obviously their efforts have not been sufficient to solve the problem. And in the meantime the Houston area has grown enormously, which creates ever more impermeable surfaces and more human structures that can be damaged by flooding.

Newspaper Warnings of the Risks Were Ignored

In 2016 a Houston newspaper even publicized some of the problems and brought it to the attention of many politicians. Nothing was done, although it was already probably too late to avoid the disaster this year. Hopefully there will finally be effective action; it will be too late to prevent the Harvey disaster but it may be sufficient to alleviate such problems in the future.

Despite the climate alarmists’ misplaced concerns about the alleged risk of catastrophic human-caused climate change, the Earth has long had very effective natural systems to control excessively high temperatures. One of those mechanisms is hurricanes, which reduce local temperatures when they exceed certain general levels depending on other local conditions. But Earth does not have natural flood control mechanisms. And when humans put things of value in the wrong spots and then fail to take adequate stormwater management measures, the bad results are just a matter of time.

Would You Trust CO₂ Controls to Protect Your Home?

The US as a whole now faces enormous expenditures to bring back the country’s fourth largest metropolitan area. The climate alarmists see this as a golden opportunity to sell their scam by scaring people into supporting CO₂ emissions controls and energy “renewables.” But the relevant question is whether the US should put its limited resources into protection of its major assets from inevitable floods along vulnerable coasts and/or regulate development so as to avoid such assets being built in areas vulnerable to floods or put them into measures to reduce human emissions of CO₂. Human-caused emissions of (CO₂) constitute a very minor part of total CO₂ emissions, which have been shown not to have significant effects on temperatures. We know that stormwater management measures can be made to work if carried out with care and in time. Such cannot be said for being able to control the movement of hurricanes so that they do not stall over vulnerable areas.

I strongly recommend using our limited available resources for effective stormwater management and devoting none of them for CO₂ emission controls. All you need to do is to ask yourself whether you would rather buy a house in a flood prone area with effective stormwater management or with CO₂ emission controls and subsidies?