Thread. I post and RT a fair amount of weather-related content on my TL because of my conviction that climate change is a mortal threat to human civilization. Note one aspect of #Yutu that @chriscmooney explains here: it strengthened very fast, from Cat 1 to 5 in about a day.
Warmer ocean water due to climate change means we can expect to see more of this. It has obvious implications for disaster preparedness along US coasts. Bigger, stronger storms could be right on top of people before they could evacuate...
...or reinforce residential and commercial structures, as we saw with #Michael in Florida & Georgia earlier this month. Climate change brings much more with it, though, than bigger hurricanes. @fivefifths has a penetrating observation in @TheAtlantic theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Somewhat like the Great Recession, future natural disasters will fall most heavily on the Americans least able to withstand them — people who live in less well constructed housing or on flood-prone land, or who lack the resources to rebuild. Each future major hurricane...
...or other natural disaster will be a local uprooting, decimating communities and weakening Americans’ connection to a democracy that cannot protect them or restore what they lose when disaster strikes. In this and other ways we should expect climate change...
...to have a corrosive effect on human society, and on free government especially. The @IPCC_CH report released earlier this month made clear that we have less time to mitigate climate change than was once thought. Meanwhile, an entire American political party...
...is committed to the ignorant, irresponsible fantasy that climate change isn’t happening. The party Donald Trump has taken over would waste the time we do have to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. We should consider this without flinching. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
In the meantime, our thoughts should be with the Americans on Saipan and Tinian in the Northern Marianas as #Yutu plows westward over their islands. [end]
Adding this thread from Northern Marianas native @togawamercer
