Scientists have warned that misinformation spread by climate deniers such as Florida’s extremist Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, increases the “vulnerability” of communities in the path of severe weather events.
The message comes on Saturday, the first day of what experts fear could be one of the most intense and dangerous Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, threatening a summer of natural disasters across the US.
Recall that earlier this month, DeSantis signed a law erasing the words “climate change” from Florida statutes and in effect pledging the state’s future to burning fossil fuels, a significant contributory factor in global warming and an unprecedented “supersizing” of hurricanes’ destructive power.
“I can say I don’t believe in gravity, but if I step off a cliff I’m still going down,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, said during a webinar hosted by the group to discuss expectations for the six-month-long hurricane season. “When we decide not to react to the information that science provides us, it’s a choice to increase our vulnerability rather than decrease it.”
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Hayhoe also noted that “hurricanes are getting stronger and more dangerous, heavy rainfall is getting more frequent, home insurance is going up”, saying she’s “worried about what this means for my city”.
“We can say all of those things without mentioning the words ‘climate change’,” she continued. “There are conversations that can still happen, and must still happen. It illustrates the importance of cities, community organizations, researchers, businesses, homeowners’ associations and insurance companies carrying that conversation and making the direct connection between what’s happening and why it matters to our homes, the places we live, our families and the people, places and things that matter most.”
Hayhoe said that water in the Atlantic and Caribbean was already as hot as temperatures usually recorded at the peak of hurricane season in August and September. That does not bode well for a summer in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) expects up to 25 named tropical storms, including four to seven major hurricanes with winds at 111mph (179km/h) or higher.
“Heat-trapping gasses are building up in the atmosphere and wrapping an extra blanket around the planet, and nearly 90% of this extra heat is going to the ocean,” she said. “We’ve been looking at record warm ocean temperatures for over a year now and they are what fuel these storms. When you think about that massive amount of heat and tropical storms plugged into the ocean as their power source, you can understand how we are really supercharging these events.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
