Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.

In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

“Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.”

It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
    42·
    15 days ago

    Fun fact, the reason we all call it “climate change” and not “global warming” was because the George W Bush administration directed NASA to do so, as they deemed it less “scary” to the public:

    In interviews, Republican politicians and their aides said they agreed with the strategist, Frank Luntz, that it was important to pay attention to what his memorandum, written before the November elections, called ‘‘the environmental communications battle.’’

    In his memorandum, Mr. Luntz urges that the term ‘‘climate change’’ be used instead of ‘‘global warming,’’ because ‘‘while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.’’

    Also, he wrote, ‘‘conservationist’’ conveys a ‘‘moderate, reasoned, common sense position’’ while ‘‘environmentalist’’ has the ‘‘connotation of extremism.’’

    President Bush’s speeches on the environment show that the terms ‘‘global warming’’ and ‘‘environmentalist’’ had largely disappeared by late last summer. The terms appeared in a number of President Bush’s speeches in 2001, but now the White House fairly consistently uses ‘‘climate change’’ and ‘‘conservationist.’’

    https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/us/a-call-for-softer-greener-language.html

    What drives me insane is how everyone on the left just… went along with it. Now we retroactively rewrite history and claim that they were always separate terms with entirely different distinct meanings. And knowing that so many highly educated, inquisitive, independent thinking people didn’t think to question that or look into that, it frightens me.