Two years ago I entered in this web log a post about a monstrous hurricane that hit Texas, a coastal state along the Southwestern seaboard of the country where I live, known today as the United States of America. (You may, if you wish and are able to, look up that post, entitled "Hurricane Harvey, 21st Century Behemoth" and dated 9/5/2017).
At that time Hurricane Harvey was among the worst natural disasters to the hit our country, and surely the worst, most destructive hurricane, destroying much of the Texas city of Houston.
This hurricane was a new weather phenomenon in its size and in that, unlike previous hurricanes, it moved very slowly so that it stayed for days hovering over the city of Houston,
...where it dumped over 50 inches of rain. |
But that very same year, 2017, two more equally monstrous hurricanes, Irma and Maria, defied the forecasters and wreaked havoc on the southeastern coastal state of Florida and some nearby islands in the Caribbean Sea and laid waste to the island of Puerto Rico, killing over 3,000 people.
Two years later the island of Puerto Rico has still not recovered. |
...then swirled in place, barely moving for days, causing in that area destruction and floods of historic proportion. |
...which reached record wind speeds of 185 miles an hour, |
And yet for the past three years at the end of summer monster storms have been rising up out of the Atlantic Ocean, each one worse than the previous, each one breaking unprecedented records of size, strength, and destruction.
And note this, Historian of the Future: we, the people of the planet Earth, know perfectly well the cause of these apocalyptic weather events.
For years every reputable scientist on the planet has been reporting that climate change caused by global warming caused by humans' overuse of fossil fuels is the cause of, and will continue to be the cause of, these monster storms. According to scientists bigger, slower, wetter - and consequently stronger, more intense and more destructive - hurricanes are the product of the rising temperatures of the ocean in which they are born.
And we know, we absolutely know on this day, September 4, 2019, how to stop this terrible climate trend that we have caused. We even have the the technology to to replace fossil fuels with clean energy sources.
But our country, The United States of America, the most powerful country by far on the planet, is currently ruled by foolish old men devoured by greed and personal power, which they put far above the welfare of our nation and our world.
And so, the worried scientists tell us, year after year the hurricanes will come and they will get worse as the planet warms. And we could stop this. But as of today we are doing nothing.
And while this part of the world is being destroyed by wind and water, other parts of the world are being destroyed by fire...
To be continued...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/world/americas/hurricane-dorian-bahamas.html
"A Warmer World Makes Hurricanes Wetter and More Intense,"
https://www.apnews.com/47d8e0bf05354260931de08ad9976a37