Hurricanes Are Getting Worse == Why are so many people afraid to talk about climate change? (David Leonhardt, columnist, The New York Times)

Winston Churchill said before World War II, “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

Listening to the St. Johns County Commission and St. Augustine Beach City Commission when they (rarely) deign discuss these issues, one wonders why:  is it because they are dull, dupery  Republicans, unsophisticated, and ruled by developer$ and their campaign ca$h? 

While the City of St. Augustine made great strides under Mayor Nancy Shaver, her stroke and resignation left the City without a leader on these issues.

The City's low credibility on environmental issues has been further damaged by:

• bogus purchase of 91-93 Coquina Avenue property on. false grounds of flood control set back our credibility, 
• Public Works Director Michael Cullum, P.E inviting me to "step outside" at the all-white January 31, 2019 "Keeping History Above Water" meeting, and t
• exclusion of locals and denial of press pass/scholarship for City-sponsored "Keeping History Above Water" event at Flagler College, subject of investigations by federal agents. 

From David Leonardt, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Timesman:

Hurricanes Are Getting Worse

Why are so many people afraid to talk about climate change? 

By David Leonhardt

Opinion Columnist

• Sept. 3, 2019

Image

People in Vero Beach, Fla., watched the heavy surf as Hurricane Dorian neared the United States coast on Monday.CreditCreditMark Wilson/Getty Images

This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday.

The frequency of severe hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean has roughly doubled over the last two decades, and climate change appears to be the reason. Yet much of the conversation about Hurricane Dorian — including most media coverage — ignores climate change.

That’s a mistake. It’s akin to talking about lung cancer and being afraid to mention smoking, or talking about traffic deaths and being afraid to talk about drunken driving. Sure, no single road death can be attributed solely to drunken driving — and many people who drive under the influence of alcohol don’t crash — but you can’t talk meaningfully about vehicle crashes without talking about alcohol. 

Climate change, likewise, doesn’t cause any one hurricane on its own, but it’s central to the story of the storms that are increasingly battering the Atlantic. Why are we pretending otherwise?

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For more: I find the National Climate Assessment reports — cautious documents, written by a federal panel of scientists — to be helpful in understanding the role that climate change does (and doesn’t) play in influencing the weather. Those reports explain that the warming of the planet does not appear to be increasing the total number of hurricanes. But it does seem to be making those storms stronger and causing them to produce much more rain.

Warmer air and seawater cause storms “to rapidly reach and maintain very high intensity,” the scientists have written. Over the last few years, hurricane activity has been “anomalous and, in one case, unprecedented.”

Dorian became a Category 4 hurricane on Friday, before reaching Category 5 — the most severe designation — over the weekend and then falling back to Category 4 on Monday. Both Categories 4 and 5 qualify a hurricane as severe, and Dorian is the first Atlantic storm to reach that status this year. The heart of hurricane season often lasts from August to October.

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The Rise of Extreme Hurricanes

From year to year, the number of serious hurricanes fluctuates. But the last few decades show a clear and disturbing trend.

5

Annual Category 4 and Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes

4

Number each year

3

20-year

moving

average

2

1

0

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

By The New York Times | Source: National Hurricane Center; data on hurricanes is considered most reliable since geostationary satellites began tracking them in the 1970s.

From the 1960s through the 1990s, a typical year had only one severe hurricane. In this century, the average number has roughly doubled, as you can see in the chart above. And because global warming is intensifying, scientists expect the number of extreme storms to continue rising. 

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Programming note

Thank you to Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare and Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg Opinion for writing this newsletter while I was on vacation over the past couple of weeks. If you missed any of their pieces, I particularly recommend Quinta’s criticism of Jim Mattis, President Trump’s former defense secretary, and Jonathan’s case for the filibuster.

If you want to keep following their work, both Quinta and Jonathanare on Twitter, and Jonathan writes a newsletter. You can be sure I’ll be quoting them in coming months, too. 

If you are not a subscriber to this newsletter, you can subscribe here. You can also join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook.

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David Leonhardt is a former Washington bureau chief for the Times, and was the founding editor of The Upshot and head of The 2020 Project, on the future of the Times newsroom. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for columns on the financial crisis. @DLeonhardt • Facebook