Trump Talks, Nature Acts: 3,000+ Dead In Natural Disasters Since 2017, Heat Building, Fires Growing
In four days of speeches lasting more than eight hours at the Republican National Convention, climate change was never mentioned as a threat to the country. That silence stands apart from the climate alarm bells that have been sounding since Donald Trump accepted his first nomination for president four years ago. Thousands of Americans have been killed in natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires during Trump's first term in office. Each of those four years has been among the world's hottest on record. Leaders of other nations have taken action as the United States ignores the issue.
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More than 3,000 Americans have died in natural catastrophes during the past four years; most of them were victims of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The massive Category 5 storm killed an estimated 2,975 people in Puerto Rico and forced thousands to flee the U.S. territory. The devastation continues to have ripple effects three years later. Tens of thousands of people still live under leaky blue tarps. The island's power supply, never reliable to begin with, has become far worse, and some parts of Puerto Rico were without power for a year.
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Record wildfires have also burned across the West. The 2018 Camp Fire in California was the deadliest; it killed 85 people and destroyed more than 10,000 homes. It was fueled by drought, an outcome of climate change. This week, California continued to battle the second- and third-largest wildfires in state history. Officials have connected the fires to climate change. "All but three of the Top 20 Largest #Wildfires have occurred since 2000, with 10 of these large and damaging wildfires occurring in the last decade," the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection tweeted yesterday. "As fire weather continues to become more extreme, California is adjusting to fight these larger and more destructive wildfires."
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The Trump years have been some of the hottest since record-keeping began after the Civil War, according to NASA. After a record-warm July, this year may break the all-time annual heat record set in 2016. That's a likely outcome, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. That's notable because four years ago, the record warmth was fueled by El Niño, a band of warm water covering the tropical Pacific Ocean. That influence is absent this year, Schmidt said, and long-term trends point to rising heat.
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063712713