From Bloomberg News: FEMA: Caught Between Climate Change and Congress . This is a complex issue, with many facets. and FEMA is only partly to blame. Please read the entire 5-page article for more details. Some excerpts:
Thanks to climate change, extreme weather disasters have hammered the United States with increasing frequency in recent years—from drought and wildfires to coastal storms and flooding. It is perhaps surprising, then, that the U.S. agency in charge of preparing for and responding to these disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), doesn’t account for climate change in most of its budget planning and resource allocation or in the National Flood Insurance Program it administers.
“Climate change is affecting everything the agency does, and yet it isn’t given much consideration,” said Michael Crimmins, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona who is leading a project to try to improve FEMA’s use of climate science data. “FEMA has to be climate literate in a way that many other agencies don’t have to be.”
A main problem, he and other experts say, is that FEMA doesn’t use short- or long-term climate science projections to determine how worsening global warming may affect its current operations and the communities it serves. Instead, FEMA continues to base its yearly budget and activities almost entirely on historical natural disaster records. That practice is exacerbated by the fact that the agency is at the mercy of economic and political pressures. In addition to having to deal with years of recession that ate into its budget, FEMA has repeatedly been caught in the crosshairs of partisan politics that forced funding cuts and blocked proposed increases.
Recovery Diva 
OK, Claire. One more time. There is no credible evidence that “climate change” has anything to do with the increasing severity of disasters. Number of landfalling hurricanes slightly decreasing, intensity decreasing; apparently a similar trend for tornadoes. Drought – Dust Bowl of the ’30’s was worse. Climate change projections from models – the actual climate has been deviating from the projections over the last 15 years, with no end in sight. Why would anyone use these models for anything serious (except to get more research funding)?
Having said that, I agree we should be using projections, just not the lousy computer models we’ve been using. IMO, we would be better served to do pattern matching – look for decades that best match current conditions and vector out from there. For example (I’m spitballing a little here because I have not looked at this in depth), if the ’90’s and 00’s match the ’30’s and 40’s, then I suggest using the ’50’s and 60’s to project what might be waiting for us. Oh, and – please! – don’t plan for the worst. We’ve got way too many other problems to spend money on a hypothetical worst case. And – again, please – don’t spin the projections out past about 20 years: does anyone seriously think that the world in 2050 will be anything like the world in 2014. Let alone 2050-2100.
Your condescension is as inappropriate as your assertions are inaccurate, and certainly highly selective. It is also truly alarming to see such a climate science-denying mentality on the part of anyone in any way involved in disaster management. Given that no one disaster event should be approached as mono-causal, there most certainly is both credible and growing evidence linking climate change to disasters, in particular temperature extremes (esp. heat waves), unusually heavy rainfalls and attendant floods, as well as droughts, just for starters. You also seem to be confusing and conflating the terms “climate” and “weather,” which are hardly interchangeable. Climate science and change is about long term weather trends, not immediate ones, and although most recent years, certainly including 2013, have seen many weather and certainly some disaster related records broken – neither these recent events nor your examples alone in any way speak definitively to these longer term trends. And although its hard to tell what “computer models” you’re referring to, you’ve conveniently omitted the most important fact about inaccurate model predictions, which is that climate scientists are increasingly alarmed at how conservatively inaccurate even there most extreme worst case prediction scenarios have been – and the extent to which the rate and intensity of climate change has clearly been underestimated overall.
I’m not denying climate science, only the unfounded assertions of inaccurate models. In fact, I don’t even argue against the fact that the earth seems to have warmed since the ’70’s. I think the jury is still out (and should stay out) about whether that’s a good or bad thing. But when Bill Read and Rich Knapp – previous and current heads of the National Hurricane Center say in public meetings that there is no evidence for an assertion I believe them. Further, our metrics for disasters are not very good. Costs have gone up, but the evidence I’ve seen leads me to conclude that that is due to building in risky places. The number of Presidential declarations has gone up, but a declaration is a political pronouncement, not a scientific one. People point to “Superstorm Sandy” as evidence of climate change, and yet 1938’s Long Island Express was actually more severe. Had NY and New England been hit by it today, the damage and deaths would have dwarfed any other storm the US has experienced.
My point is, we don’t have to resort to the hypothetical consequences of some hypothetical future predicted by an inaccurate model to justify dealing with severe weather events or any other type of disasters. They’re going to happen. We need to deal with them. Whether it’s climate change or an inevitable consequence of living in an unstable world is immaterial. Whether we agree on “climate change” is immaterial. What we must agree on is that people are in harm’s way – disasters will happen – and we must find ways that work to deal with them.
Your conclusion is perfect John… I’ve argued that many times. As a Michigander, the only thing that climate change scientists can say around here is that nighttime temps could raise a little warmer and the growing season could get a little longer over the next 30 years. How do I deal with that as an EM?
Plus many are saying that as EMs we should be climate change advocates – and that’s the LAST thing we need on our plate. That’s the role of the politicians. You and I may tell people to recycle 100% and use electric cars and all that, but that’s not going to move a soul.
Good point, and I adjusted my text slightly to not blame FEMA entirely.
Thanks for the new link. I will follow up on that in a future posting.
The issue is that FEMA’s funds are directed by Congress. When annual grants are spent, 25% has to spent on terrorism regardless of how high (or low) that ranks on a hazard vulnerability assessment. When politics stops getting in the middle of allocations (HA!) then you might get to blame FEMA.
BTW Unrelated but The Guardian did a special series on rebuilding after disasters for a variety of global locations – http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jan/27/port-au-prince-collision-progress-haiti-earthquake