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Instruction: Summarize the passage “What scientist want you to see in flood water’. In not more than 120 words, describe actions/ways to provide safety for people during flood.

Instruction: Summarize the passage “What scientist want you to see in flood water’. In not more than 120 words, describe actions/ways to provide safety for people during flood.

Introductory Circuit Analysis (13th Edition)
Introductory Circuit Analysis (13th Edition)
13th Edition
ISBN:9780133923605
Author:Robert L. Boylestad
Publisher:Robert L. Boylestad
Chapter1: Introduction
Section: Chapter Questions
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Instruction:
Summarize the passage “What scientist want you to see in flood water’. In not more than 120 words, describe actions/ways to provide safety for people during flood.

Hurricane Harvey: A lesson learnt? A The variables in the climate change formula are mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. Denying the problem loads up on the suffering. There are possibly human factors at play about which we have less certainty. In the case of hurricane Harvey, it is possible that it stalled off the coast of Texas because of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with human-caused global warming. As climate scientist Michael Mann notes, his research has shown that these sorts of stationary summer weather patterns tend to happen more often in a hotter world, but we cannot yet say if that happened in Harvey's case. B Other human activities also worsened Harvey's impacts. Houston suffers from urban sprawl, covering a larger area, nearly 600 square miles, than the cities of Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Manhattan, and Santa Barbara combined. With urban sprawl and poor planning came expansive impervious surfaces – absorbent soil covered instead by concrete and asphalt, increasing flood risks. Houston's lack of zoning laws combined with the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) also encouraged development in flood prone areas. To make matter worse, private insurance companies do not want to insure homes that face a significant risk of flooding. Yet, with a lack of regulation and government insurance offered by NFIP, development in relatively high-risk flood areas can be profitable. Until a flood strikes, 85% of Houston homeowners do not have flood insurance and will be unable to recover most of their losses from Hurricane Harvey. Others are covered by NFIP, which was already $24 billion in debt before Harvey. This is because NFIP has not been charging sufficiently high premiums as it has underestimated flood risks based on maps and projections that are sometimes decades out of date. Homeowners living in areas where flood risks have significantly increased face a challenging problem because flood insurance premiums do not cover all those risks. Risk factors such as rising sea levels and expanding urban sprawl that contribute to that increased risk are not the fault of the homeowners, who can then become angry constituents for politicians working on updating NFIP. The needed changes to the program have yet to be made. Due to this, the government is effectively subsidizing the costs associated with living in high-risk flood areas. NFIP has paid out $5.5 billion to just 30,000 properties until 2005. Taxpayers end up footing billions of dollars of the payouts because the NFIP premiums are too low. E Ten days before Hurricane Harvey hit, the government revised the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard. The policy required taxpayer-funded public infrastructure projects to plan for future flooding risks. Much infrastructure within and around Houston is now underwater, and accounting for future 56 flooding risks when replacing it would be smart. But to some, this policy is a burdensome regulation, claiming that the infrastructure permitting process has too many "inefficiencies." Apparently, those "inefficiencies" include saving taxpayer money by reducing future flood losses. F In short, to minimize the suffering caused by climate change, we need to be smarter about addressing the problem and adapting its consequences. Right now we are instead becoming more foolish, and that will only lead to increased suffering. If we want to minimize the suffering caused by future Harveys, we need to talk about how climate change is making them worse, and we need to do something about it.
Transcribed Image Text:Hurricane Harvey: A lesson learnt? A The variables in the climate change formula are mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. Denying the problem loads up on the suffering. There are possibly human factors at play about which we have less certainty. In the case of hurricane Harvey, it is possible that it stalled off the coast of Texas because of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with human-caused global warming. As climate scientist Michael Mann notes, his research has shown that these sorts of stationary summer weather patterns tend to happen more often in a hotter world, but we cannot yet say if that happened in Harvey's case. B Other human activities also worsened Harvey's impacts. Houston suffers from urban sprawl, covering a larger area, nearly 600 square miles, than the cities of Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Manhattan, and Santa Barbara combined. With urban sprawl and poor planning came expansive impervious surfaces – absorbent soil covered instead by concrete and asphalt, increasing flood risks. Houston's lack of zoning laws combined with the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) also encouraged development in flood prone areas. To make matter worse, private insurance companies do not want to insure homes that face a significant risk of flooding. Yet, with a lack of regulation and government insurance offered by NFIP, development in relatively high-risk flood areas can be profitable. Until a flood strikes, 85% of Houston homeowners do not have flood insurance and will be unable to recover most of their losses from Hurricane Harvey. Others are covered by NFIP, which was already $24 billion in debt before Harvey. This is because NFIP has not been charging sufficiently high premiums as it has underestimated flood risks based on maps and projections that are sometimes decades out of date. Homeowners living in areas where flood risks have significantly increased face a challenging problem because flood insurance premiums do not cover all those risks. Risk factors such as rising sea levels and expanding urban sprawl that contribute to that increased risk are not the fault of the homeowners, who can then become angry constituents for politicians working on updating NFIP. The needed changes to the program have yet to be made. Due to this, the government is effectively subsidizing the costs associated with living in high-risk flood areas. NFIP has paid out $5.5 billion to just 30,000 properties until 2005. Taxpayers end up footing billions of dollars of the payouts because the NFIP premiums are too low. E Ten days before Hurricane Harvey hit, the government revised the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard. The policy required taxpayer-funded public infrastructure projects to plan for future flooding risks. Much infrastructure within and around Houston is now underwater, and accounting for future 56 flooding risks when replacing it would be smart. But to some, this policy is a burdensome regulation, claiming that the infrastructure permitting process has too many "inefficiencies." Apparently, those "inefficiencies" include saving taxpayer money by reducing future flood losses. F In short, to minimize the suffering caused by climate change, we need to be smarter about addressing the problem and adapting its consequences. Right now we are instead becoming more foolish, and that will only lead to increased suffering. If we want to minimize the suffering caused by future Harveys, we need to talk about how climate change is making them worse, and we need to do something about it.
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