Harvey the Hurricane: Yes, Climate Change Did This
“Oh Lisa, there’s no record of a hurricane ever hitting Springfield.” — Homer Simpson
“Yes, but the records only go back to 1978 when the hall of records was mysteriously blown away.” — Lisa Simpson
As I write this, it is raining in southeastern Texas. Hurricane Harvey came ashore on Friday, spent all day yesterday dousing the Texas coast, and is now doing the same to slightly inland Houston. Some areas have already been hit with over 25" of rain, a Houston TV station is flooding live on air, and the overall flood is almost certainly going to be the worst on record. It is very bad, with my cousin in Houston just texting me that they aren’t flooded yet but will be if it keeps up. She also used the term “worst case”, which is significant because she has a doctorate in statistics and is not prone to overstatements or hyperbole.
This being the Twitter era, the suffering is playing out live, with the chief of Houston’s police department warning people not to flee into their attics unless they have an ax to hack their way out. As extreme as that sounds, it is not theoretical. More than a few people in New Orleans died that way during Katrina.
As the fatalities mount and the damage becomes clear in the coming days and weeks, a familiar debate will play out in the media and in policy circles. There will be questions about what is and isn’t worth rebuilding. There will be questions about preparedness and about the response of local, state, and federal agencies. (President Kwyjibo will undoubtedly insert himself into all of this in his usually self serving and self glorifying way.) Finally, there will be tiresome debates over whether or not climate change was responsible for all this destruction, misery, and death.
The answer is yes. Climate change did this.
Climate deniers and their media flacks will dispute this. They’ll say that you can’t prove that. And a lot of reputable climate scientists and communicators will hem and haw and talk about how much extra rain was caused by this or that factor. This little blog post won’t be able to prevent any of that, but just in case you want something to reference, here goes:
Fact #1 — Stupid development in Houston and the surrounding area has significantly increased flood risk in the past decade. This was done over the objections of people who knew better. (Incidentally, this kind of development is also very energy intensive in terms of transportation and heating/cooling, so it’s making climate change worse even as it makes the local area more susceptible to disaster. But I digress.)
Fact #2 — The Gulf of Mexico is unprecedentedly warm, with records being broken all winter thanks to climate change.
Fact #3 — More heat in the water makes storms like Harvey vastly more powerful. This is the difference between a bad storm that takes weeks to recover from and a catastrophic one that takes years.
Fact #4 — Just as in New Orleans twelve years ago, this kind of flood was predicted, and is, in fact, inevitable in a warmer world. This is not a natural disaster. It is man made failure to plan.
I hope everyone in Houston makes it through, but my hopes don’t mean diddlysquat. The deaths and destruction can be laid at the feet of the people in charge of Houston, of Texas, and of the United States. Storms like this were known to be coming, and nobody in a position of real authority did a damn thing about it. This irresponsibility stretches back decades, and the most meaningful question in the aftermath of Harvey will be whether or not anything changes. Sadly, my money’d be on no.
We didn’t learn from Katrina, we don’t listen to the scientists who told us not to pave whole counties, and even unprecedented destruction might not change that. Good luck, Houston.
