More on the way?

Scene outside Rainelle United Methodist Church

It's been a while since the last post. Late last week, I went with a friend from the WV Council of Churches to visit flood stricken areas. The Council has been heavily involved in disaster response for years. We made it to Nicholas County and Rainelle in Greenbrier, We hoped to get to Rupert and White Sulfur Springs from Rainelle, but the road was blocked.

There was debris everywhere and often inches of mud on the streets and inside affected buildings.

Many schools, such as this one in Richwood, were heavily damaged.

There were many striking images of erosion and roads washed away. 

And, while clear-cutting like that pictured above, wasn't directly responsible for the rain, it clearly didn't help.

Here are a few thoughts:

*The generosity of West Virginians is truly astonishing. There were many examples of people without a lot giving and doing whatever they could.

*The scary thing is that this didn't just affect low lying areas. There was so much water at one time that even homes on high ground were destroyed.

*I was deeply impressed by the Methodist pastors I spoke with who threw themselves into relief work in addition to their pastoral duties. And I know Methodists weren't the only ones. And I want to give a special shoutout to Team Rubicon, a veteran's disaster response group that really had its act together.

*At some point, can we start talking about climate change?

*There will be even more need for long term assistance when flood stories recede from the headlines.

*Finally, and sadly, there's a flash flood watch in effect for many of the hardest hit counties for tomorrow.

Working overtime

The weather gods have been really busy around here lately. I mean, jeez, going from tornado to flood to snowstorm in barely over a weekend is pretty impressive. I have a feeling extreme weather events are going to be on the menu from here on out, even in the land of climate change denial.

THE STATE OF THE STATES...could use a little work.

OCCUPY this.

MY LATEST RANT is here. Topic: prison overcrowding. Somebody has to feed the right wing trolls that lurk around the Gazette website.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The new normal?

Here's an interesting--and ominous--statistic: more than 42 million people last year had to flee their homes because of natural disasters. This was more than twice as many as the year before. Climate change might have a thing or two to do with that.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009 was mainly due to the impact of "mega-disasters" such as the massive floods in China and Pakistan and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.

It said more than 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather-related hazards such as floods and storms that were probably impacted by global warming, but it couldn't say to what extent.

It looks like 2011 is going to have some nasty numbers of its own. As this Newsweek article suggests, extreme weather is likely to be the new normal.

CLASS WARFARE FROM THE PRESIDENT? As if.

FIXING THE ECONOMY. Here are some ideas.

ANTI-WAR BIPARTISANSHIP? Maybe a little bit.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED