On Nov 27, 10:17 am, Sam Wormley wrote:
wrote:

I'm not sure why Wormley is trying to use the floods in Cedar Rapids
to make his point. After all, the city is called Cedar _Rapids_ from
which we can infer that it was built on a river. Rivers have been
known to be the site of floods since ancient times. If the long-term
monetary benefit of having the city on the river exceeds that of $20
billion in damages then what's the problem? (That amount of damage
would work out to about $3 million per acre that was flooded, ie
pricey real estate.)

I agree that Cities, Businesses and homes should not be built on
flood planes. It does happen.

Background--the levee system was meant to handle 500 year event
floods and one would expect a flood of that magnitude to go over
a foot or two. The 2008 flood breached the levee system by almost
11 feet.

Twenty Billion Dollars in flood damage--not fun for the local,
state or nation.

The impact of global climate change in the form of increased
rainfall, increased rate of rainfall and increased big rainfall
events is a concern.

Here's some data from Iowa State University
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/facult...entations.html

More from University of Iowa
http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/fac...directory/cee/...

I wonder how many flood victims in Cedar Rapids drive around in
SUVs?

Maybe Iowa should ramp up its production of biofuel (without Federal
help.) The use of fossil fuels and the transmission of electricity
into the state could then be gradually reduced to zero over a period
of a few years. Then we will all see if the state can really meet its
own energy needs via biofuel (along with whatever hydro, nuclear, wind
and solar it might be able to keep running without support by fossil
fuel.)

If it can't do that and wants to resume fossil fuel use, then no more
compliants about global warming should be heard from anyone living or
working in the state.