Apocalypse Now: Hurricanes And Floods

     Dear Future Cyberarchivist who, while sifting through ancient internet postings from bygone centuries in search of the history of humankind, has come across this blog chronicling the events and observations of life in the first quarter of the 21st Century AD:
      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.

    At the time Hurricane Harvey was considered to be the worst hurricane in history - it had been preceded in  2005 by previous record-setting Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city of New Orleans, and in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy that hit the eastern coastal state of New Jersey - and forecasters pronounced Hurricane Harvey to be a once-in-500-years weather event. 
    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.

     Almost exactly one year later, in early September of 2018, another monster hurricane called Hurricane Florence churned up in the too-warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean and slammed into the south eastern coastal states of North Carolina and South Carolina,

...then swirled in place, barely moving  for days, causing in that area destruction and floods of historic proportion.

    A month later the Florida coast, not yet recovered from the destruction wreaked by the unprecedented storms Irma and Maria from the previous year, was again hit, this time by a  a hurricane even more savage than Hurricanes Irma and Maria,

....a monster from the sea called Hurricane Michael,

...which reached record wind speeds of 185 miles an hour,

...and set a new record for size, strength, and destruction.

      And one year later, today, September 4, 2019, Hurricane Dorian, a behemoth hurricane every bit as destructive as Hurricane Michael was last year, is churning off the beleaguered south eastern coast of the United States, with predictions that it will make landfall soon.

     But since its nascence in the Atlantic Ocean several days ago Hurricane Dorian has already laid siege to the Caribbean Island group to the southeast of the United States known as the Bahamas with 185-mile-an-hour winds and rains that have caused terrible devastation and loss of life.

   "Apocalyptic," "Unprecedented," "Truly catastrophic," "A historic tragedy," are the words that are being used by those who have seen the destruction of Hurricane Dorian to the Bahamas.    
      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.

    These foolish old men refuse to stand up to the obscene wealth and power of the fossil fuel industry because they themselves are in the pockets of the rich men who rule that industry.
     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...

References:
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