If our news media continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.
Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent “derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase “extreme weather” flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.
Galveston Hurricane 1900
This system reached Cuba as a tropical storm on September 3 and moved into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on the 5th. A general west-northwestward motion occurred over the Gulf accompanied by rapid intensification. By the time the storm reached the Texas coast south of Galveston late on September 8, it was a Category 4 hurricane. After landfall, the cyclone turned northward through the Great Plains. It became extratropical and turned east-northeastward on September 11, passing across the Great Lakes, New England, and southeastern Canada. It was last spotted over the north Atlantic on September 15.
This hurricane was the deadliest weather disaster in United States history.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/outreach/history/
And it all was because of all those horse drawn SUVs.
“we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.”
This is colossally ignorant. Affluence is the most effective reducer of pollution.
It’s all in the wording. Although China is a far bigger polluter and certainly surpasses the US in CO2 emissions, the size of the population there keeps the “per capita” rate lower.