Hurricane Costs & Climate Change, Both Growing/RNN

 Not much more to say.   Get ready for some unpredictable and wild weather, and the costs associated with each storm.  Beyond the financial toll, of course, is the losses of homes and lives.

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Nobody can truly predict what the overall cost of climate change will be, especially for those who still deny that it exists. But for a moment lets take a look at Hurricane Harvey’s projected cost, according to private weather firm AccuWeather, they are saying, “Hurricane Harvey could be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history with a potential price tag of $190 billion,” and this is based on a preliminary report. This week the United States is about to be hit with a second hurricane, Irma, which is projected to be even stronger than Harvey.

A statement from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) made by Anders Levermann – he’s one of the research domain co-chairs at PIK, a Professor at the University of Potsdam and Adjunct Scientist at Columbia University’s LDEO, New York, said…

“Hurricane Irma just entered the top ten of the strongest Atlantic cyclones on record – we can only hope it will not make landfall in Cuba, the Dominican Republic or densely populated Florida. Even I as a climate scientist am startled to see another potentially devastating storm in this region so shortly after Harvey. Unfortunately, the physics are very clear: hurricanes get their destructive energy from ocean heat, and currently, water surface temperatures in this region are very high. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas raise our planet’s temperatures and provide the energy for ever stronger tropical storms. So climate change is not causing theses storms, but it can worsen their impacts. The question will also be how the US government will react if it has to handle two natural disasters – at the same time...."