Thread: Snow!
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Old 2008-02-07, 19:44   Link #17
Ledgem
Love Yourself
 
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cats View Post
ps. That thread you linked is a scaremonger trap if I ever saw one.
Ha ha, that was my post he linked to. I was really hoping you'd show us your scientific background and disprove some of my points made in that thread, Cats, but you never did. I won't discuss them here, though.

This storm isn't necessarily indicative of global warming. In engineering we learned that there are some theories behind design of systems. I specialized in civil/environmental engineering, and water management was a big issue. On the subject of how to deal with rain storms, we learned something rather interesting.

When one designs a system, most people think that it should be designed as strong as possible. But how much is too much? The sturdier the system (the greater its capacity, in the case of storm drains) the more it'll cost, and its maintenance may also be higher than a lower-level system. Instead, engineers created charts and graphs. There were concepts such as a 20-year storm, 50-year storm, and the 100-year storm. The concepts were derived from data gathered from the environment. The basic idea was that every 20 years there would be a storm of a certain magnitude, every 50 years there would be an even worse storm, and every 100 years there would be a gargantuan storm. It's not really practical to design for a 100-year storm as it'd happen so infrequently. And who knows - perhaps a newer, more capable system would come up before it came.

If these unusual storms occur more often, attribute it to global warming. Otherwise, congratulations - you may have just experienced your first 10- or even 20-year storm.
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