Op-Ed: Hurricane Ian and the coming climate crash
Hurricane Ian, the “perfect storm” in our current era of global warming, is not the “perfect storm” that many media outlets would have you believe.
The storm is causing damage not only to the Caribbean and Bahamas but also to the U.S. Gulf coast states, including Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. The storm is expected to cause “significant, long-lasting and devastating damage to our state’s coastline.”
So far, there are no reports of deaths and the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) says that the storm has brought “minimal wind damage” to the U.S. mainland. In fact, the storm only got a “mild tropical storm” label because it was classified as a tropical storm instead of a hurricane earlier in the week.
But even before the storm made landfall in Florida, it left a path of destruction. The storm damaged homes, ruined crops and put the lives of at least 12 people at risk, according to the Miami Herald.
The hurricane is only one of a growing list of global climate related disasters due to global warming. There was a recent discussion on Alternet about an article on the growing list of disasters caused by climate change.
The article discussed five major climate change related disasters that took place the past two years. There was a discussion about the devastating cyclone in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 300 people and was the deadliest cyclone in the history of the southern Indian Ocean, the drought in Africa, the massive flooding in Europe, the increasing number of violent storms in the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the increasing number of hurricanes. And the list is not complete because there are other issues relating to climate change including the increase in extreme weather such as flooding, droughts and wildfires.
The article also discussed the melting of the Arctic Sea ice, glaciers and Arctic coastline. The melting of the Arctic sea ice, glaciers and Arctic coastline, combined with the loss of Arctic sea ice, contributes to a rise of sea level by around 2 feet. If this trend continues, the Arctic coast will be under water and the Greenland ice sheet would be under water, according to the article.