It needs to be noted, for those who did not realize it, that Gov. Ron DeSantis is a moron:
Gov. Ron DeSantis is an addict. Not to drugs, but to fossil fuels. He’s showing all the signs, but nobody has had the guts to call it what it is. You doubt me? Look at what he did last week. DeSantis signed a bill that deletes most of the mentions of climate change from state […]
floridaphoenix.com
And he has decided to double down and confirm his status as a moron:
'This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history.'
floridapolitics.com
But don’t pay any attention to DeSantis. If anyone expects him to have the balls to admit he’s wrong, and has been all along, please don’t hold your breath. No, that’s not how it works. Climate change denial is an integral part of the fictional alternative reality being spun by MAGA.
To the slow to learn, I hear you, and you’re every bit as dumb as DeSantis: “Now put it all together: Hot water for power, moist air for heavy rain, and rising seas for the massive storm surge. Can you see now how Helene was a creation of our altered climate, just as surely as
the Creature was built by Dr. Frankenstein?
None of this should be a surprise, by the way. Federal scientists
predicted all this 10 years ago“.
I hope you readers all came through the horrors of Hurricane Helene fairly unscathed. At my rickety Craftsman humble-abode in St. Petersburg, we suffered eight or nine brownouts and scores of tree limbs knocked down, but that was it — this time. Just a few blocks away, though, the storm surge...
floridaphoenix.com
“When I have questions relating to climate change in Florida, the first person I call is usually
David Zierden, who serves as our state climatologist. He runs the
Florida Climate Center in Tallahassee.
David Zierden, Florida’s state climatologist, via Florida Climate Center
“I am pleased to report that our duly elected dimwits have not deleted his job the way they foolishly deleted the words from the law.
He told me there’s little doubt among scientists that climate change played a major role in making Helene such a monster. It did so in three ways:
Bear in mind that hurricanes draw their power from the heat of the water they pass over, and the oceans have been soaking up much of the heat from the steady warming of our globe.
“Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico are all running
at or near record levels this year, just as they did last year,” Zierden said. Meanwhile,
the Gulf’s famous loop current is bringing up deeper warm water too, he said.
The heat in the ocean makes the storms
rapidly intensify. How rapidly? This is the way
The New York Times put it: “In less than a day, Helene transformed from a Category 1 hurricane Thursday morning to a Category 4 storm on Thursday afternoon, which would make it the strongest ever to hit the Big Bend coast of Florida.”
The warmth also
makes the atmosphere extremely moist. That’s how we wind up with storms like Helene dumping so much more rain, he explained.
“That’s a piece of what’s happened in North Carolina,” Zierden said.
Finally, he said, there’s the role that the rising sea level plays in making the storm surge so much worse.
“When everyone’s talking about the record storm surge,” he told me, “at least a foot of that is caused by sea level rise.”
Now put it all together: Hot water for power, moist air for heavy rain, and rising seas for the massive storm surge. Can you see now how Helene was a creation of our altered climate, just as surely as
the Creature was built by Dr. Frankenstein?
None of this should be a surprise, by the way. Federal scientists
predicted all this 10 years ago.
During hurricanes and tropical storms, “homes and infrastructure in low areas are increasingly prone to flooding,” that decade-old report notes. “As a result, insurance costs will increase and people will move away from vulnerable areas.”
When we talk about the people Helene turned into paupers or worse, we shouldn’t call them “storm victims.” We should call them “climate victims.” And when the survivors move, we should call them “
climate refugees,” because that’s what they are, just like
the folks on islands that no longer offer enough dry land to live on.
But as Tom Petty told us,
we don’t have to live like a refugee“
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