Op-Ed: Hurricane Ian and the coming climate crash
By now almost everyone has heard what’s being called the “Climate of the Future” – the worst and most dangerous climate change that humanity has ever endured. It’s been almost a year since Hurricane Harvey struck the U.S. Gulf Coast, taking out Houston, and since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of data and events showing that we are heading toward new levels of storm activity and climate chaos.
As we approach the 2018 hurricane season (Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Michael and now Hurricane Ian), with the addition of two potential systems for the 2019 season, one can only wonder what exactly is going on with the climate situation. More importantly, what exactly is going on with the way that newsmedia, scientists, and policymakers are responding, and how can we build upon all the good work that’s been happening on the climate action front?
Climate change was always going to be the defining issue of the 21st century, and it’s not like we didn’t know before we even began to see the effects of global warming. The problem is that the problem is too big, and too complex, and too difficult to quantify. When it comes to climate change, there is simply no agreed upon “expert” point-of-view. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, too many unknowns about the future, and too much controversy about the science.
For all the noise about the “climate crisis,” the best way of understanding this conversation right now is to get a sense of what scientists and policymakers are actually thinking about climate change and what they are talking about when they do it.
To make matters even more complicated, because the debate is happening in an environment where the most urgent solutions are being discussed as the planet warms up, there are some major players who are making up the narrative about what’s going on around here. In this context, climate change is being seen as the most important issue of our times, even though it has been around for only the last century or two.
The current climate of the future is a perfect storm of scientific uncertainty, technological complexity, and politics that can’t help but produce a lot of uncertainty and confusion. It’s a climate of too much of everything, and therefore, it�