Environmental Economics

"Hurricane Irene Opens New Inlets on Hatteras Island"

From the inbox:

August 28, 2011

For Immediate Release: Hurricane Irene Opens New Inlets on Hatteras Island

Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines

Western Carolina University

Personnel from the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS) are actively surveying the North Carolina coast following the passage of Hurricane Irene. Center Director Dr. Rob Young completed a surveillance flight of the northern Outer Banks Sunday morning and filed the following brief report of storm impacts:

1) In general the storm did little damage to ocean front property along the northern Outer Banks. Some dune scarping is visible, but storm surge was less then expected. Even so, Hurricane Irene has opened a new inlet just south of the freshwater ponds on Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on Hatteras Island [Images IreneInlet1-3.jpg] (lat:35.684185, lon:-75.482329). The inlet is not as large as the so-called “Isabel Inlet”, but at flight time there was continued tidal exchange and filling in the inlet will require some time. There is also a small breach of the island just north of Rodanthe (MirloInlet.jpg) in the Mirlo Beach area (lat 35.607286, lon: -75.465431). Maintaining Highway 12 in light of even small storms like Hurricane Irene has become an unending challenge for NCDOT. It certainly makes one wonder about the planned replacement of the Bonner Bridge. Even if we can build an immovable Bridge, will there be a road left to connect to?

2) The $30+ Million beach nourishment project at Nags Head has survived the storm, although there certainly has been some loss of sand along the beach. The degree of loss is difficult to assess “on the fly” from the air. PSDS Associate Director Andy Coburn flew the beach on August 25, two days before the hurricane. Before images of the Nags Head project are currently available at https://picasaweb.google.com/psdspix and after images will be available at psds.shutterfly.com on Monday. In our judgment, Hurricane Irene would not have caused significant damage to any properties, with or without the new beach.

3) The primary impact from Hurricane Irene to the North Carolina Outer Banks was from significant soundside flooding impacting many areas of Duck, Kitty Hawk, Collington Village, Roanoke Island, and others. Much of this water has filled natural swales and dips on the backside of the islands, and will be around for some time.

Additional updates will be coming. Rob Young can be reached at [email protected] or 828-506-2216. Andy Coburn can be reached at [email protected] or 828-227-3027.

Blogging the hurricane coverage ...

... and scooping the Sports Economist. Do those guys read Deadspin?

Rovell, CNBC's business reporter, tweets like the battle-weary Marine that he isn't:

darrenrovell Just got the call: Heading to Montauk. Will be live in the storm on CNBC from 6am to 11pm ET on Sunday. Pray for me.

He'll be there because, yes, the world needs to know what the hurricane's hypothetical Under Armour sponsorship revenues would be. Because the world needs to know what the hurricane's lunch of the day will be—we fear it might be Rovell's pompadour (although he says he has "hurricane-force gel.") Because the hurricane needs to know how she should tweet.

Nonetheless, people of eastern New England, take heart. There's now a massive obstacle standing between Irene and you: Darren Rovell's ego.

Here is to hoping that Rovell is as awesome as Jim Cantore in New York city who just told me that 10 stories up you can add a hurricane category (OMG this hurricane is way worse than I thouht, I'll keep watching The Weather Channel) and he wishes it would go ahead and start raining ... "man, it is humid here!"

Get out your hurricane calculator

Nitpicking the WSJ Numbers Guy:

My print column this week examines the tricky science of projecting hurricane damage ahead of landfall, as the east coast of the U.S. braced itself for the expected arrival of Hurricane Irene.

Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied hurricanes’ impact, posted on his blog Friday several analogues to Irene, with the caveat, “None of the storms is really a good analogue.” He noted he’d been getting many calls after Nate Silver, in a blog post on the New York Times website, projected possible Irene damage based on a study Pielke and colleagues conducted of prior hurricanes’ economic damage. ...

Because there are scant recent data on deaths from storms, most forecasters focus on economic damage, which Pielke found has been proportional to the fourth power of wind speed. Willoughby says that storm intensity is proportional to the cube of wind speed. So why the higher exponent? One possibility is that storms of a certain intensity pass a threshold beyond which they “breach buildings’ envelopes,” meaning they begin to cause damage within buildings, ramping up damage quickly. Other studies have found that storm damage may vary with the seventh power or even the ninth power of wind speed.

Pielke’s damage calculations don’t include inland flooding, which could be a big problem with Irene. His team wasn’t able to find a single number that predicts flooding damage, unlike speed, for wind. In the Midwest, six-week rainfall totals were most important, while in the southwest, rainfall over a few hours better predicted the biggest danger, of flash flooding, according to Pielke.

For these and other reasons, including the usual uncertainties of any climate forecast, projecting hurricane damage is no sure thing. “It’s really uncertain at this point what the damage might be exactly,” Pielke said. “We could get lucky or we could get really unlucky.”

via blogs.wsj.com

The simple rule of thumb above seems a little too simple, which is the point of the question mark in this post title. Rules of thumb, like one million dollars per mile and wind speed to the Xth power, are OK in terms of giving orders of magnitude estimates but they are usually wrong. In the hurricane case, it really matters where the hurricane lands. Landing near Miami, New York and New Orleans will generate lots of damage. Landings near less populated areas will generate less damage.

Also, I'm not sure what this line is all about: "Because there are scant recent data on deaths from storms, most forecasters focus on economic damage, which Pielke found has been proportional to the fourth power of wind speed." What does "scant recent data on deaths" as motivation for economic damages all about? Deaths and economic damage are two measures of the anthropocentric severity of a storm. The death data can be found at the National Hurricane Center website.

Note: My favorite line from today's hurricane coverage was something like "Hurricane Irene landed near Cape Lookout as a powerful ... Category 1 storm (gasp)." The Weather Channel seems particularly disappointed that the wind speed isn't a bad as forecast.

Daily Supply and Demand

Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the East Coast, threatening nearly 10% of the nation's refining capacity that lies in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware.

Gasoline futures traded in New York have already spiked, rising 10 cents a gallon this week, largely on fears there will be a disruption in output from the refineries, barge routes or pipelines serving the heavily populated eastern seaboard.

via money.cnn.com

Future expectations of supply decreases increase demand today causing prices to rise today.

Baptists and bootleggers

Via thehill.com:

A major environmental group has teamed up with a conservative think tank and others to urge the congressional supercommittee to slash oil, coal, ethanol and nuclear subsidies — a move the groups say would save $380 billion over the next five years.

Friends of the Earth, the Heartland Institute, Public Citizen and Taxpayers for Common Sense released a report Wednesday, dubbed “Green Scissors 2011,” that casts the cuts as benefiting both the environment and the economy. 

“While all four groups have different missions, histories, goals and ideas about the role of government, we all agree that we can begin to overcome our nation’s budgetary and environmental woes by tackling spending that is not only wasteful but environmentally harmful,” the groups said in the report.

Friday beer post: A frothy mug of jobs?

Phil Miller:

With the stroke of a pen Wednesday morning, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak cleared the way for local brewers to start serving beer straight from their breweries. 

“We’re making it easier for Minnesota beer drinkers to drink Minnesota beer and create jobs here,” Rybak said. “Sales of pints on site will also grow the local beer economy by lowering the barriers for entry for new breweries, which will allow them to hit the ground running. And it complements Minneapolis’ burgeoning local food economy that is creating new businesses and even more jobs.”

Story here.  I agree it will make it better for the local economy, but I don't buy the jobs angle.  The ordinance will improve the local economy because the brewhouses want to have the taproom and beer drinkers want to sample the fare at the plant, so to speak.  It gives both sides more freedom and both sides will be better off.

But on the jobs angle, who is going to visit the taprooms - locals or non-locals?  How many non-locals would have come to Minneapolis anyways?  My guess is that most of the tap room visitors will be folks from the Twin Cities area (not just Minneapolis) who would have spent time in Minneapolis anyways.  In that case the ordinance would simply redistribute economic activity rather than create it

But I like the ordinance because it gives people more freedom of choice.  I just disagree with the jobs angle.

via marketpower.typepad.com

A bad couple of days for the Great Lakes

Thursday...

A federal appeals panel has rejected the request of five Great Lakes states to close Chicago-area shipping locks. But the panel warned yesterday that if ongoing efforts to stop the advance of Asian carp halt or drag, the issue could be revisited.

...

A native of China with no known predators in the United States, Asian carp have out-competed native fish populations for food, jeopardizing the Great Lakes’ $7 billion annual commercial and recreational-fishing industry.

via www.dispatch.com

Friday...

The toxic algae that spreads across the western basin of Lake Erie each summer is the worst recorded since researchers started tracking the problem in 2002.

In fact, this “bloom” of blue-green algae is more than twice as dense as the record bloom that plagued the lake in the summer of 2009, according to tests performed by the University of Toledo.

...

The algae pose a threat to the lake’s $10 billion annual tourism industry. In addition to threatening the health of people and pets, the algae also help create a vast oxygen-depleted dead zone where fish can’t live.

via www.dispatch.com

Overheard in the hallway

Student: "Yeah, but economics is not math. Economics is just awful."

Who will (should?) pay hurricane costs

We talked earlier about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) insisting that federal disaster relief in the wake of this week’s earthquake would no longer be automatic. Whereas Congress used to provide emergency funds after a disaster, without regard for budget caps of offsets, Republicans no longer believe in such an approach.

I said it was likely Cantor would take a similar approach with Hurricane Irene. This afternoon, the Majority Leader’s spokesperson confirmed this with Brian Beutler — if the hurricane does major damage, Republicans will only allow federal assistance if Democrats accept comparable cuts elsewhere in the budget.

via www.washingtonmonthly.com

Perhaps, the newest member of the Society for BCA

From the inbox:

I would like to invite you to join the growing group of academics and professionals who are members of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis. The Society provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and professional development for those who have an interest in the rapidly developing field of benefit-cost analysis.

We have celebrated many accomplishments in the past year, including:

• Organizing our successful third annual conference and meeting, Evidence and the “NEW” Policy Evaluation: Frontiers for Benefit-Cost Analysis: This at-capacity conference, held in Washington, D.C. in October 2010, featured presentations by prominent benefit-cost analysis scholars and practitioners from academia, nonprofits, and governments from the U.S. and abroad. Learn more
• Supporting the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis: Editor Scott Farrow, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is currently accepting submissions for the third issue. The first two issues received wide acclaim and featured articles by renowned scholars. Learn more
• Supporting the work of the Benefit-Cost Analysis Center’s Principles and Standards project: The Society will revise and review a multi-year effort to establish overall principles and standards for benefit-cost analysis, particularly with respect to social programming. Learn more
• Creating an international community of benefit-cost analysis scholars and practitioners spanning academia, nonprofit organizations, and government.

My PDF form is filled out and ready to mail/fax. But, I wonder what the benefits and costs of an online membership form are?