Climate change action needed to reduce natural disasters
To the Editor:
“If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is.” So said the Mayor of Miami on Sept. 8. Then he called it “a poster child for what is to come.”
Climate change is warming the oceans, and warm ocean waters are hurricane fuel. That’s why Irma was the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.
Climate change raised the sea level over .13-inch each year in the 20th Century. The higher sea levels mean larger storm surges, and more people die from flooding in hurricanes than from wind.
Climate change happens because as our atmosphere warms, it holds more moisture. That’s why Hurricane Harvey dumped 20 trillion gallons of rain on Texas and Louisiana.
But, at the same time, the hotter water evaporates out of the soil and into the air, sucking away moisture from the plants that rely on it. And, that means that dry places get even drier.
Northern Montana and western North Dakota are having an unprecedented drought. Tanja Fransen, meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service in Glasgow, Mont., says it’s as dry there “as it’s been in recorded history.”
There and in other Western states, cold weather held the mountain pine beetles in check, but warm winters have increased their numbers dramatically, so beetles have killed enormous numbers of trees.
Dead trees in dry, drought-stricken areas have fed an unprecedented numbers of wildfires across the American West.
Climate change is making unprecedented disaster the new normal. Urge Senator Baldwin, Senator Johnson, and Congressman Ron Kind to take immediate action on climate change.
Dan Dieterich
Stevens Point