For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur. Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas. “The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010,” Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Climate change fueling extreme weather
It’s a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly | Michael E Mann
“That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it’s almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that.” Researchers are also quite confident in linking the intensity of the rainfall that is still falling in the Houston area to climate change. “This is the type of event, in terms of the extreme rainfall, that we would expect to see more of in a warming climate,” Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford told BBC News.
Nature’s ironic ‘revenge’: Harvey hits the heart of the Fossil Fuel empire.. but also strikes the Poor and uninsured…
Ecocidal Houston Oil Mafia Reap Whirlwind of Climate Change’s Hurricane Harvey….. Exxon Knew for decades and Profited while paying none of the costs
Exxon may lose billions.. Serves Them Right!.. you say. Only that the criminal billionaires scooping the loot from the great fossil fools nightmare will still have their mansions, private islands, yachts and offshore fortunes safely stashed away.
It’s the ordinary six and a half million of us in Houston, only one on six of whom have flood insurance, who will have their lives ruined.
The great irony is that fracking for gas and tight oil is both the greatest promotion of EXXON TEXAS and probably the greatest new addition to runaway climate chaos, though that can’t be proved since Trump abolished methane measurement.
But does the Texas fossil fuel industry cause Climate Chaos? Of course it does, though you can’t prove a specific case ”Harvey benefited from unusually toasty waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As the storm roared toward Houston last week, sea-surface waters near Texas rose to between 2.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average. These waters were some of the hottest spots of ocean surface in the world. The tropical storm, feeding off this unusual warmth, was able to progress from a tropical depression to a category-four hurricane in roughly 48 hours”. see footnote 1
Climate change made every stage of Hurricane Harvey more horrific .
Okay so the sea is much too hot, but there’s evidence Harvey’s weird stalling out on the coast may also be connected to climate change. Because of man made devastation and galloping desertification inland south Texas produces a semi permanent anticyclone which blocks entering storms. see footnote 2
And why did the pushing jet stream suddenly cut off? Severe jet stream anomalies worldwide have been linked to climate change.
The Texas Fossil Fools will not pay the bill, but they’re guilty as hell. Just as you can’t pin the millions worldwide of statistically ‘extra deaths’ from air pollution on the industry because any individual one could be from other causes. ( though a class action could perhaps be brought on a percentage basis?) So climate change disasters, big and small cannot until now be pinned on those who get obscenely rich causing them. see footnote 3
Like Rex Tillerson. His hundreds of millions in offshore accounts won’t be compromised, his mansions won’t be affected by ‘fracking blight’, he will cry crocodile tears with his friend Donald. see footnote 4
”Lawsuits seeking to apportion responsibility for climatic events have generally failed in the past. But lawyers from the firms Client Earth in London and Earth and Water Law in Washington say that’s likely to change. They believe a new branch of knowledge called attribution science will allow the courts to decide with reasonable confidence that individual events have been exacerbated by manmade climate change. They believe in future governments and firms risk being successfully sued if they don’t cut their emissions”. ..BBC
It’s like you have great big field (the planet). You need to profit the maximum to pay your astronomical debts and ludicrous lifestyle. The most profitable for you in this analogy is to plant with a crop that destroys the earth and climate for the next years (the fossil fools industry). So to hell with the rest, you expand and plant every inch with poison (GDP expansion).
I hope that Hurricane Harvey has crippled the Texas oil industry, I see Exxon had to close the 2nd biggest Refinery. I hope the new LNG Frack Gas export facilities in Sabine Pass get closed down, to stop them exporting US frack gas which is up to 5 times as bad as coal for the climate. see footnote 5
I hope they run short of oil and regret this weeks absurd sanctions blocking oil imports from democratic Venezuela, where the dirt poor at least get free health, education, cheap housing and possibly flood insurance. see footnote 6
Mother Nature’s inevitable revenge has struck back at the moronic looters of their heritage. Unfortunately striking down thousands of innocents in her path.
“The hurricane is just a storm, it is not the disaster,” said Dr Ilan Kelman, at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and Institute for Global Health at University College London. “The disaster is the fact that Houston population has increased by 40% since 1990. The disaster is the fact that many people were too poor to afford insurance or evacuate… BBC
How Climate Change Is Shaping the Floods of Harvey – The Atlantic
FOOTNOTES
footnote 1
Gulf of Mexico waters are freakishly warm, 4 days ago – Waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where Harvey is forming, are five … Water temp off South Padre Island is 85 deg, far above Aug mean of 80 deg. …………..The hurricane churned up water 100 or even 200 meters below the surface, said Trenberth, but this water was still warm—meaning that the storm could keep growing and strengthening.
“Harvey was not in a good position to intensify the way it did, because it was so close to land. It’s amazing it was able to do that.”……….Climate change in Texas Wikipedia Texas emits the most greenhouse gases in the US.[27][28] The state’s annual carbon dioxide emissions are nearly 1.5 trillion pounds (680 billion kg). Texas would be the world’s seventh-largest producer of greenhouse gases if it were an independent nation.[28][29][30] The primary factors in Texas’ greenhouse gas emissions are the state’s large number of coal power plants and the state’s refining and manufacturing industries which provides the bulk of the United States’ petroleum products.[28]
footnote 2
Because of man made devastation and galloping desertification inland south Texas produces a semi permanent anticyclone which blocks entering storms.
”Aug 24 17 NWS..
Mid-level ridging centered over the western United States will build over the region early next week, resulting in fewer clouds and warmer temperatures”.
”Central Texas is changing from arid grassland to uninhabitable desert, in part due to greenhouse pollution from the fossil fuels once buried under the ground. Other unsustainable practices, such as overpumping of groundwater, unregulated sprawl, and poor conservation practices are accelerating the desertification. The region has been in a drought since 1995–1996, with brief respites in from catastrophic, flooding rains”.
The desertification process forms strong blocking high pressure, repelling storms or causing them to stall out on the coast as did hurricane Harvey, where it could continue for days, lifting the super heated Gulf water and dumping it on the coast.
Harvey spun up from a tropical depression to a Category 4 superstorm in two days as it crossed Gulf of Mexico waters that were 2.7 – 7.2°F warmer than “normal” (the 1961-1990 baseline).
In big slow-moving storms like Harvey, the water vapor swept in can be even higher. As climatologist Kevin Trenberth told the Atlantic, “the human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so up to the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway — but [human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”
footnote 3
Fossil Fools to be sued for 7 million Poison Air pollution Deaths a year?
footnote 4
Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, was the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show. Tillerson – the ex chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.
Rex Tillerson Related.
- Busting Exxon | Greenpeace International
- Climate change criminals ExxonMobil and Koch Industries threaten …
- Climate criminal number one — Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson
The top five investor-owned companies on the list — Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Shell, and ConocoPhillips — are responsible for one-eighth (12.5%) of all industrial carbon emissions.
Climate criminals exposed: Koch and Exxon,
footnote 5
Hurricane Harvey closes key oil and gas facilities in Texas
- Dozens of oil and gas platforms had already been evacuated before Harvey hit.
- How soon they reopen depends on the severity of flooding.
- Gasoline prices will likely rise after the storm.
Flood of Fracking Gas from US will Arrive Soon in Europe #NoAlFrackGasDelTrump Sabine Pass. Louisiana..Gas Natural Fenosa (GNF) has a contract to receive hundreds of cargoes of the Fracking Gas glut in the US which is causing innumerable cancers, poisoned aquifers and has produced a 2,500 sq ml permanent methane plume over western US visible from space that greatly exacerbates the global climate crisis.
The GNF contracts has been signed for 20 years beginning in August / Sept. 2017.
footnote 6
US Pushing Civil War on Venezuela for Oil Control After 18 years of subversion, infiltration, coercion, bribery and a constant blitz of fake news the US is pushing Venezuela into a horrific civil war in order to take control of its oil.
”The rich want lower taxes, and ending social programs for the have-nots, and they want the privatization of vital government enterprises so that they can loot the country, as is happening right now in Brazil. And most of all, they want the privatization of the oil in their hands. They want to be billionaire oligarchs just like oligarchs in other oil-rich countries.
More links
Climate chaos works both ways. While Houston suffers apocalyptic flooding most of the state may become a desert. A 2010 study found that virtually all of Texas will be at high or extreme risk of climate-induced water shortage and drought in 2050.
see also
Greedy Capitalist Ecocide: Pollution Paradox gave us Trump and Rex
The Free 
Luar biasa gan……..
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