A Note: Global Warming Threads

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My stated point was that sugar cane is more sustainable than fueling cars with gasoline is. Are you disputing that?

I have several times referred you to post 1436 or the Apocalypse Soon thread where I show less than 3% of the earth arable land would be required to fuel all the world's cars and asked if you find some fact there in false. I have noted that much more land is farmed with very primitive methods so food and fiber production could be increased more than 10% even if 3% of the earth's arable land were producing sugar cane - and only about 1% would be needed to fuel all cars if cellulosic alcohol proves to be economically feasible.

We have some what different ideas about what is ethical. I tend to think that the poor and jobless in say Central America have the same right to clear forests to better their life styles as did the early Americans who cleared Ohio's dense forests etc. Much of the native forest in the US has been cleared to better the lives of Americans. When they restore these forests, then perhaps they can tell others not to do what they have done.

Don't misunderstand - no forest needs to be cleared to fuel all the world's cars with sugar cane alcohol - only more efficient farm practice than are typical now in Africa and some parts of South and Central America need to become more modern. Your assumption that more land must be cleared is false. If you are concern with the clearing of the Amazon Forest then don't buy pretty wood furniture. As I have explained this so many times, I'll be brief:

A single tree can be worth more than a year's salary and many have no salary at all, so that tree is illegally cut down and then many acres of the forest are burned to hid the crime. Soon some poor person will try to eak out a living in the burnt area with some chickens and a pig or two scratching and rooting between the partially burnt logs, but eventually some richer absentee "owner" will more properly clear the land, add some fertilizer and good seeds to make a pasture for his steers.* Their meat is valuable enough to ship to markets, but sugar cane is not. So sugar cane is not responsible for the clearing that is happenng in the Amazon basin. Rich people buying expensive wood furniture are. Just as other rich people are killing elephants to have some carved ivory item sitting in their book case or on their coffee table.

* Brazil has the world's largest herd and because most of Brazil's alcohol fueled cars are slightly CO2 release net negative, the steers (their belches mainly) are a much greater source of CO2 than the cars are.

 

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A statement with little content - true of tulip, corn, paper, etc. production. Of course it is possible to be unsustainable, as running cars on oil certainly is; but running them on solar energy's most economical form (sugar cane alcohol) is very likely to continue its ethical and sustainable long (~300 years) history.

Cane is bulky and of low economic value per ton, so it will always be grown relative near to the fermentation and distillation facilities. In Brazil, they currently are all near the main population center (mainly Sao Paulo & Rio) so the alcohol delivery trucks don't need excessive energy. AFAIK, the closest to Amazon Rain forest that any sugar cane is commercially grown, is still ~1000km away.

On (1) Then why are you concerned with the forest in Central America and Africa that IMO should be partially converted to higher economic value uses (be more productive) – that is how man has progressed from his primitive savage state.. In many parts of the world there has been very little of that progression – Rural populations still live as their ancestors of 1000+ years ago did, with high infant mortality, short life spans, malnurished children with brain growth stunted, etc.
(2) Yes we can, and do when it is economically desirable (to the rich who control the world). It is not a “mistake” to clear some land to properly nourish children, gain some measure of freedom from dependance upon food imports from the US's mid west. Currently that modern mechanized agriculture on that fertile land can sell food in many parts of Africa and S. & Central America more cheaply in the local market than the subsistence farmer whose farm is only 10 miles away from the market can! US has “undone” their past – once the local farmers did supply the food to the near by market. For example, the very rich Cargill family, privately owns the giant agricultural Cargill corporation, often the world's largest privately owned corporation, and via food aid programs buying their food profits greatly, while making local food production economically impossible. The rich have undone the past to increase their profits.
(3) I agree there is a lot wrong with world today, and a great part of the reason is that too much power is in the hands of a very few. – They like having cheap labor, living a marginal existence. Don't want them to become more self sufficient, etc. In the US this shows up strongly with local funding for schools, so that the children of the poor (and poorly educated) go to poor schools to become the next generation of poor and poorly educated whose voting is easily controlled by TV's sound bites the rich can pay for.

The children of the well-off live in neighborhoods that can afford to pay their teachers well, put lot of books, audio visual aids, computers etc. in the library instead of have rats there. The children of the very rich all go to expensive private schools. - I know: just before my first born was to go to school, I moved to Columbia MD, where the best schools in Maryland were being staffed. Also, very important was that all parents were very concerned with their child's education. For example, my wife dressed in her native Norwegian clothes and gave a lecture about Norway each year. I and a dozen other men unloaded an 18 wheeler truck full of oranges and grapefruit, which were picked < 24 hours earlier every month on a Saturday. The fruit was sold to ourselves by mothers in advance and on Saturday they gave paper slips to the buyers telling us men what to load into cars. Every year, we gave more than $5000 dollars to the school for extras the school board would not fund. For example our elementary school had a small zoo: many snakes, fish, birds and other small animals. Feeding them was a reward students could earn by working hard at their studies.)

I. e. with the poor education poor neighborhoods can provide, the graduates are incapable of independent thought and analysis. I want to empower the masses with good education and let them have good economic opportunities, not exploit them with “Big Mac” or no jobs at all, for the benefit of the rich, who are growing ever richer. United Fruit Co. is highly opposed to my POV. They want to continue paying less than a dollar per day to the cutters of bananas in Central America who have no other economic opportunity, but a virgin forest to hunt in.

OK:

I think it is immoral, not ethical, and down right arrogant for people with good jobs in cities and factories where there once there was a forest to tell poor forest dwellers they have no right to do what the ancestors of those arrogant people did earlier to better their lives with more productive use of a tiny part of their forested land. You seem to have a different ethical POV. - Have no problem with preventing them from bettering their standards of living. Again I note that no forested land needs to be cleared to produce more than enough sugar cane to fuel all the world's cars.

BTW "Big Oil" likes ill educated voters too as they can in their TV ads ignore the fact at sugar cane alcohol is already cheaper than gasoline on a per mile basis and requires very low cost modifications to their existing IC engine cars. If they mention alcohol at all in the TV sound bites, it is to note it only has 70% of the energy that gasoline does. Mainly, however, Big Oil, tries to be political correct, especially Shell, with their TV adds promoting gasoline alternatives that are no threat to their profits. - For example, the hydrogen fueled car or the cars covered with PV cells that race every year in several different countries. Well educated voters would know they can drive for less with sustainable, renewable, slightly net CO2 negative alcohol from sugar cane.

 

No exactly the opposite. I said anything, including growing cane, can be done in an unsustainable fashion. That was why I said you statement that growing sugar cane could become unsustainable, despite its ~300 years of sustained production, had no content. Is obviously true. Just like glass can be broken is obviously true, but not worth posting about.

Now most of the world agrees with that "No Slavery" POV, but historically, Slavery was considered the natural state of men in societies, sanctified in the Bible and most if not all "holly books" and earlier laws, including those of the US, even the constitution of the US, etc.

There is a modest size city in Brazil about 60 miles west of Sao Paulo called "Americana." Slavery was on its way out but still legal in Brazil, but not the importation of slaves, when the US had its civil war and Lincoln decreed the US's slaves free (Mainly as a war measure as they were the "supply chain" for the South's soldiers). Near the end of that war and in the years immediately after it, quite a few Southerners, seeing their slave based way of life being destroyed, came to Brazil and settled where the city Americana is now. It still, but without slaves of course, produces food and fiber for Sao Paulo etc. but not as economically as an even larger group of Japanese immigrants to Brazil does.

To quote you: "The point that you miss is that things have changed between then and now." except I don't "miss that." What is ethical, moral, etc. changes as it is not a law of nature, but a social construct.

You had noted there were problems with the way the modern world is run / operates. I agreed and used that as an opportunity to again repeat my point, which I have made in many posts, that the fundamental reason for this social failure is that the masses are not well educated. Can't think for themselves, do critical analysis etc. so are easily exploited by the rich and powerful few, especially now that most in US at least have TVs. In the US it is the local funding of schools that must change, so ALL have at least the opportunity to get a good education, not just the kids whose parents have enough wealth to buy home where the schools are good, as I did.

All this is an unsupported claim and false. BTW where wheat will grow well sugar cane will not. Brazil must import almost all its wheat. There is still a great deal of arable land, where the grass, called sugar cane, will grow well but much of that land is managed the way the "Old South" grew cotton. "I. e. Exhaust the soil and move on." For example, just before moving to Brazil, selling all property etc. I had in US, I bought a run down farm of about 100 acres (with two small 2-bed room houses and a small lake with fish for only $23,000 as then all who had any wealth were disparate for dollars.) - That was my "plan B" if the beautiful lady professor* I would live with in her owned apartment, did not work out as we hoped.

The farm was quite hilly with pasture so poor than it only supported 5 scrawny cows - they spent too much energy climbing up and down hills. I spent about $3000 dollars on plowing the weeds under (green fertilizer) and new grass seed. I also found a spring higher than most of the land and with cheap plastic hose made 5 or 6 slightly lower, open top, stone water tanks, so thirsty animals would not need to walk back down into one of the three valley creeks to get a drink. Ten years later when I sold the farm, just the cash from my 50 fat steers repaid for everything, more than two fold in dollars as then it only took half as many Brazilian Real to buy a dollar as when I bought the farm - Brazil was more prosperous than now.

Point is that still in Brazil and most of the world, there is a huge amount of very under-utilized and poorly managed (or even totally abandoned) pasture land - only tiny fraction of which could supply all the sugar cane needed for all the world's cars. Typically, that under-utilized land is, like my farm, too hilly for mechanized harvesting. A fraction of my plowing was done by tractor, but more by a team of four oxen. (Plow only down hill then climb back up with plow out of ground.) It was amazing to watch the driver of the oxen control them with just words and the threat of his tiny whip. Harvesting sugar cane manually was the only way it was done about a decade ago and will provide many badly needed low skill jobs, if all the world's cars are using alcohol fuel.

* She has more wealth than I do (inherited many buildings that are rented) After we had lived togethers for 10 years, we, especially she, became concerned that if we died in a comom accident, my children could claim half her wealth as we were "common law wed." Fortunately, Brazil has several different types of marriage. Our's is one called (in translation) "total separation of wealth." - No need for any "Pre-nuptial agreement" and unlike those, lawyers can not challenge it. Her kids by prior marriage get her wealth and mine, my wealth.

 

That is not the meaning I give to "land in use" but not necessarily wrong - just strange, to most I think. From your POV ever square meters of the world's deserts are "in use." - I would say they could be in use if irrigated or something of economic value were being taken from them, even just solar energy.

I don't do that. In fact have no idea what you are even referring to. In fact I have pointed out that part of China's remarkable progress is due to exactly that. China, for a simple example, did not need to send monkeys up into space to be sure prolonged absence of gravity was not fatale to primates.

As I now understand your "concern" it is that growing more sugar cane, could be mis-managed, but that certainly is much less likely to serious damage man than continuing to burn oil for car fuel is. The very recent Nature article suggest that if we continue our current ways (CO2 and especially CH4 concentrations in the air rapidly growing) then ~60 TRILLION dollars of damages is to be expected.

I'm not claiming that is certain, only that we should error on the side of caution, especially since we easily can with well known and 30+ year demonstrated technology* much more cheaply than switching to nuclear powered electric cars. All that is required is that bad agricultural practices be improved slightly mainly in the under utilized land with even just semi-modern agriculture practices. I.e. crop rotations, better seeds, contour or "no plow" technology, etc. and no more of the third world's common "wear out the soil and move on" or "slash and burn" clearing of forests etc.

* Sustainable sugar cane alcohol fueled cars with operational cost less per mile driven than gasoline fueled cars and slightly net negative CO2 release! (but we are probably too late to save the wild polar bears from extinction as it is probably that the arctic ocean will be ice free in summer in less than a decade.)

 

Yes, in some areas where for lack of land (or more accurately it is all owned by a wealthy few) children are malnourished and have stunted brain growth, etc. I do think it ethical for them to illegally clear a small part of the forest to grow some food (or items they can sell to buy food) but this is not the case in Brazil as your map shows. There is lots of open land, often hilly, that may have been pasture once, like the ~100 acre farm I bought and restored to productive use. Also, Brazil has, I think, the world's toughest laws about preserving forest and makes strenuous efforts to enforce them.

For example, once when I returned to my farm after storm I learned one cow had died and serveral were sick due to eating the blown off leaves of a tree. (Typically a good pasture has a few large trees so cows can rest in the shade.) I told my caretaker: "Cut that dam tree down and burn it." He said: "No you don't want to do that, at best you will only pay a heavy fine - at worst you will go to jail." "How will they know," I asked. He explained that at least every month a plane flies over taking photo graphs. I guessed they are digitally processed for differences. But he knew what to do: I. e. he cut a ring thru the living layer below the bark and in the next half year of so the tree died. I was not arrested or fined. The owner of the farm next to mine did expand his pasture into the adjoining woods slowly over a few years. His actions were detected and he did pay several thousand (dollars equivalent) fine and had to reforest the cleared land. I had planted some rice, in a very small irregular strip of wet land never more than 10 feet wide (much less area than half the apartment floor space I live in), in the always damp flood plain of the valley's small river - in land I owned, but re planted the native grass there after my first crop, ~5Kilos -as messing with a flood plain is even more dangerous than cutting a few trees.

As I explained before in the Amazon Rain forest grow some trees worth more as modest length logs at the saw mill - worth more than a years minimum wage salary, so poor men with no job do cut them down and then burn many acres of the forest to hid the crime. It is rich people's demand for expensive wood furniture that is clearing the Amazon Rain forest, not need of agriculture land, especially not for sugar cane growing as cane is too bulky and of too low value to move ~1000Km to the nearest fermentation and distillation plant. Even moving beef to a modest size city, perhaps only 150km away is economically marginal, but is done on the land the rich have caused to be cleared by fire. The animal is illegally slaughtered in the field and most valuable cuts trucked to the city. Brazil also has tough laws about good sanitation at slaughter houses - they are getting extreme: now, for sale to Europe, all steers are supposed to be registered at birth, where they were born, which cow was their mother, when they got their vaccinations,* etc. and these papers are required at the larger slaughter houses if they want to export. Larger ranches insert tiny RF ID chips with this information in the animal as their "registered beef" is more valuable.

To give one more example of how tough Brazil's laws are against destruction of forest a couple of years ago a simple rural man cut a few strips of bark from a tree to make a tea for his sick wife. Some neighbor who did not like him reported him, he was arrested and sent to jail. Some of his friends told what had happened to the newspaper and the public out cry did get him out of jail after only a few months of his term had been served.

Brazil is a big country with many jobless poor** and try as Brazil might, rich people will still be able to destroy the Amazon. There is currently an often shown graphic on TV. While a foot ball game is being played the pitch steadily turns from green to brown strating at one end. - then text explains that every 4 minutes a foot ball field sized part of the rain forest is lost (but not telling because world's rich like pretty wood furniture). It is very well done - the white lines remain white - by some advanced trick of image processing.

* When I bought my farm, the very intelligent but poorly educated caretaker for absentee owners came with it. He already had cared*** for it many years, but the recent owner did not pay him well so he mainly cared for his own small farm. As we were driving back to the farm with the just purchased vaccination medicine and had the papers showing the purchase, he said "Stop here" as we crossed a bridge. Why? I asked. This is the safest place to discard the vaccine, he replied. I said no, we will put it in the cows. It did take a full day, with some of his friends helping him, to round up the herd and get them, a few at a time, into the small corral with a narrow passage exit, where they were stopped and vaccinated before being released back into the field .

** Many tens of thousands of former sugar cane cutters have no other skills or jobs now. It would help a lot to save Amazon forest, if the world's cars were running on sugar cane fuel grown on the abandoned pasture - mostly land too hilly, like my farm, for mechanized harvesting as then they would have jobs cutting cane on the hill sides, not needing to burn parts of the Amazon to live.
Your good intentions, POV that sugar cane expansion should not be allowed, is helping destroy the Amazon rain forest.
As you say, often there are "unforeseen consequences."

*** Cows eat the good grass, giving a competitive advantage to the weeds. A good caretaker, like mine, working 44 hours per week with a hoe, can put the weeds at a disadvantage if you don't put too many cows in the field. I mentioned before that I paid him ~$100 per month, on which he could save more than half as he lived outside the cash economy as did all the field workers in the valley. Other absentee owners were mad at me (the "Rich American") as their workers were asking for a "high salary" like I paid. Bolsa Familia has changed all that now - greatly expanded the lower middle class living in the cash economy.

 

What are the other important reasons? I. e. why are small sections of the Amazon Forest burned every few days, if not to hide a poor unemployed man's crime of illegally of cutting down a single tree that is worth more than a year's salary? If he could still be cutting cane on a hill side, growing sugar cane, this would not happen as much, as he has no other skill and needs to eat.

Billy T had said to trippy:
Your good intentions, POV that sugar cane expansion should not be allowed, is helping destroy the Amazon rain forest.
As you say, often there are "unforeseen consequences."

Yes but you have several times stated it was very likely to be unsustainably done, mis-managed etc. despite my noting that for nearly 300 years that has not been the case - have you not?

As far as "putting word into another's mouth", here are three recent examples of you doing that to me:

My reply, parts now bold:
"I don't do that. In fact I have no idea what you are even referring to. In fact I have pointed out that part of China's remarkable progress is due to exactly that. China, for a simple example, did not need to send monkeys into space to be sure prolonged absence of gravity was not fatale to primates."

My reply, parts now bold:
"No, exactly the opposite! I said anything, including growing cane, can be done in an unsustainable fashion. That was why I said you statement that growing sugar cane could become unsustainable, despite its ~300 years of sustained production, had no content. Is obviously true. Just like glass can be broken is obviously true, but not worth posting about."

My reply:
"Now most of the world agrees with that "No Slavery" POV, but historically, Slavery was considered the natural state of men in societies, sanctified in the Bible and most if not all "holly books" and earlier laws, including those of the US, even the constitution of the US, etc."

You may or may not know, but I have several times in posts told of my role in Baltimore's civil right struggle: That after two prior summers failed with "moral persuasion" under other leaders, I, with the help of many cars owned well-off girls from the then all girls school, Gaucher College, just North of Baltimore, used precisely timed coordinated sit ins.(The two prior summer's failed efforts had let the Restaurant Association, RA, perfect a telephone alert system that got all restaurant doors locked with waitress there to let whites in as soon as one or two sit ins had occurred.)

I was in fact the tactical commander but my title was "transportation coordinator." On a good weather Sunday I could get 25 or so simultaneous sit ins established and cost the RA's members ~$25,000 in of lost business. After a couple of months of this, the RA flipped 180 degrees and joined us (the "Civic Interest Group") in asking the MD legislator to make racial discrimination illegal, which they promptly did. I have long been a believer that people act in the own perceived best economic interest.

 

Then you should not have made the unsupported claim that other things, rather than poor jobless men cutting a single very valuable tree and then burning many acres of Amazon Forest to hide their crime (certain jail time if caught), were worth considering too. Especially now that you refuse to give any support for that claim when specifically asked for some. I have several times backed up my claim (so often you complain I am still stating) that it is economically IMPOSSIBLE for sugar cane to have been responsible for even one of the fires clearing the Amazon as sugar cane is too bulky and of too low value per ton to transport ~1000Km to the nearest fermentation and distillation center. Fields growing it are never even 160Km (100 miles) from those centers. I will further back-up ANY claims I have made which you think are questionable.

No. Like you I do logically infer conclusion from your statements. I.e. I inferred from your repeated assertions that you thought it likely that expanding sugar cane production would be unsustainable, mis-mannaged and unethically done so concluded you did not want that expansion to happen. I admit that, unlike you, I do assume Brazil will continue to prohibit the then current unethical practices. No slaves cutting cane, not children who should be in school, cutting cane, etc. No toxic waste or oxygen consuming waste dumped into rivers, etc.

For example, you infer I think slavery is ethical from my statement that sugar cane has been ethically and sustainably grown for nearly 300 years, not recognizing that what is ethical changes with time, even though I noted the Bible, and most if not all "holy books" and US's earlier laws, even the Constitution, considered slavery to be part of the natural state of men living in societies. You seem to think, ethics is some fixed natural law*, not a social construct of societies, and very different from those you and I hold, in other societies and in the US when it was founded. To give two other examples of ethical change in the US, women can now vote and 8 year olds can not work 12 hours per day in New England's textile factories. It is interesting to note, that Ancient Spartans though there was nothing ethically wrong with killing or stealing etc. - what was wrong was doing it so poorly that you got caught. Killing or stealing from the weak made Sparta stronger and more to be feared.

I also noted that I suspended my Ph. D. studies for ~4 or so months to lead the successful desegregation of restaurants in Baltimore, after other leaders, using the "moral persuasion" approach had failed in more than two years of effort. I, with help of many car owing girls from Gaucher College, was able to make, on a good weather Sunday, ~ $25,000 of lost business. The Restaurant Association soon flipped 180 degrees and joined the Civic Interest Group's request to MD legislature to outlaw racial discrimination.

* Just out of curiosity, if you think ethics never change - what is unethical now was unethical long ago and is forever unethical, what is your fixed ethical position on abortion after rape, gay marriage, picture ID required to vote, or any of the other social questions where the "fixed ethical behavior" is not agreed upon?

 

And if there really is a concerted move to cane sugar fuel, then in twenty years the saying will become "If you are concerned with the clearing of the Amazon Forest then don't drive."

Whether the impetus for deforestation is wood furniture for rich people or fuel for rich people the result is the same. Claiming that people who pursue fuel profits are inherently better/more green/more moral/more ecologically minded than people who pursue wood profits is absurd.

 

Not for sure, but Norway and Sweden were early. Who was?

 

On (1): I have never suggested that Brazil should or would be the main (or only) supplier of Sugar cane. I think there are other countries in the band ~35N to 35S latitude who could out compete Brazil in the long run as Brazil's very good growing conditions can and should be used for higher value per acre crops. Sugar cane is a grass and relatively easy to grow. Brazil will probably always grow its own needs for alcohol fuel but others in that suitable latitude band with lower labor and lower transport cost will supply the larger markets, as the world switches to alcohol fuel (if it does) for IC engine cars.

On (2): Brazil takes a totally unjustified PR hit from people who think sugar cane production has anything to do with intentional fires set in the Amazon. Not one such fire has been to clear land for commercial sugar cane production for the simple and strong fact that doing so would cost much more than the alcohol could be sold for so long as the fermentation and distillation center are more than 1000Km away. Sugar cane is to low in value and much too bulky to profitable grow more than 100miles (160Km) from these facilities. Conceptually new facilities could be made on the banks of the Amazon River close enough to the ocean for export, but as noted in (1)'s reply it would be more profitable to build then in Central America for the shorter shipping distance to US market and cheaper labor.

The "results" are NOT the same: In one case, the current case, it is very profitable to illegally cut down a valuable hard wood tree in the Amazon basin and that is being done. In the other case it is current economically IMPOSSIBLE to grow sugar cane there for profit. I think the false belief of many that expanded sugar cane production is or would destroy the Amazon Rain forest is not too openly supported by big oil, who knows tropical sugar cane is slightly net carbon negative and their fuel is a strong part of man's contribution to global warming. They also know that when oil cost $90/ barrel or more it cost less to drive your car on sugar cane alcohol, even with it having zero subsidy in competition with big oil's tax breaks (mainly the "depletion allowance.") Not to much mention that big oil is indirectly the main funding source for America's worst enemies.

On (3): What is "absurd" about noting Sugar cane alcohol could slightly remove CO2 as its utilization increases by growing on abandoned pasture land from the air in contrast to gasoline and diesel fuel one of the largest, if not the largest man-made source of global heating by net CO2 release? What is "absurd" by noting sugar cane alcohol is form of current solar energy - the most economically competitive form, and is a renewable source of fuel in contrast to gasoline and diesel which are not renewable as they are solar energy stored long ago. That is the difference between living on your current income and burning up your stored wealth.

Yes I plead guilty to thinking it is "inherently better/more green/more moral/more ecologically minded" to save stored carbon for future generation to use as petrochemical feed stock for items like plastic that do not quickly contribute to Global Warming. We are leaving them with huge debts so at least we should try (as we easily can, even with reduction in our cost per mile driven) not to added over heating of their environment by burning up oil so rapidly that the more powerful green house gas, CH4 is now bubbling up in the arctic shallow waters. So rapidly that the wild polar bears will probably not survive the ice free summer Arctic Ocean expected in less than a decade. So rapidly that in the life time of some of the youngest readers here the miles thick Greenland ice sheet melts and does approximately, according to very recent paper published in Nature, 60 TRILLION dollars of damage (floods most coastal population centers, etc.).

 

Oceans are evaporating more H2O, and some comes down on land, even in Colorado:

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5 now dead in September 2013 Colorado floods.
16Sept13 eve update: 7 now confirmed dead and ~400 still missing in Colorado. 126 rescued by helicopters landed at one major air port.