"Natural disasters" or accelerating climate catastrophe?

[Timeflyer]

Recent natural disasters ‘don’t feel natural anymore’

Helene’s wrath beyond residents’ calculated risk

Trevor Hughes

USA TODAY

CEDAR KEY – The Cedar Key innkeeper wonders whether it’s worth rebuilding this town dotted across a small archipelago – again.

“Natural disasters are natural disasters,” said Ian Maki, who has lived through five hurricanes since moving in 2018 to the island community southwest of Gainesville. “But these don’t feel natural anymore.”

Tens of thousands of residents of Florida’s Big Bend region are confronting the same fears in the wake of Hurricane Helene. And those feelings are increasingly shared by coastal residents all the way to Maine and from Alaska to California as stronger, more frequent storms and rising ocean levels upend their lives and livelihoods. Many insurers already have curtailed coverage or withdrawn entirely from some areas, indicating their long-term perspective risk.

Officials have not yet released official damage estimates from Helene, but financial services company CoreLogic initially estimated commercial and residential damage in just Florida and Georgia to be $3 billion to $5 billion. That number is expected to rise substantially with the extensive flood damage across Tennessee and South and North Carolina.

A 2022 USA TODAY investigation warned the United States is facing a climate catastrophe as natural disasters accelerate: Since 1980, the U.S. has typically suffered eight disasters a year with more than $1 billion in economic damage.

Scientists who study the Earth’s climate and weather say storms like Helene are more likely to occur in the future. Hurricanes are powered by heat, and the Gulf of Mexico has been unusually warm for years.

“The fact that the storms are so intense when they make landfall because they have rapidly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico almost certainly has a climate- change contribution to it,” said Jim Kossin, an atmospheric scientist and science adviser at the nonprofit First Street Foundation.

[Walleye]

1. But Governor of Virginia says it's "too soon" to talk about climate change now

[malaise]

2. Just like school and other mass shootings

Only thoughts and prayers are allowed, but there must be no serious discussion or analysis.

[-misanthroptimist]

3. Attribution of a single weather event is very difficult

But there is little real doubt that extreme weather events have increased appreciably in number, scope, and strength over the last two or three decades.

Extreme weather events are what led me to the conclusion that society (as we've known it) will begin to noticeably unravel in the next ten to fifteen years. And that may prove to be a bit optimistic.