"This Is the New Normal": How Climate Change Is Fueling Massive Storms like Harvey

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From Democracy Now! interview with David Helvarg: 

Hurricane Harvey has already dumped more than 9 trillion gallons of water on Texas—enough water to fill the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City twice. Meteorologists project another 5 to 10 trillion gallons of water could be dumped on the region in coming days, potentially making this the worst flooding disaster in U.S. history. We speak with David Helvarg, executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation organization, about how climate change is fueling massive storms like Hurricane Harvey.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Democracy Now’s Renee Feltz, a Houston native. 

RENEE FELTZ: Thanks, Amy. We continue to look at the catastrophic storm that’s hitting Houston, Texas, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The crisis began on Friday when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Rockport, Texas. It was the most powerful hurricane to hit the state in more than 50 years. But much of the damage has been caused not by the wind or tides, but by the massive rainfall, and some parts of Texas have already received 30 inches of rain and could top 50 inches.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now from San Diego, California, by David Helvarg, the executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation organization, and author of several books including Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America’s Forgotten Heroes. Can you talk about the connection between the hurricane that we’re seeing in Texas right now, Hurricane Harvey, who is downgraded to a tropical storm, but causing massive damage, and this issue of climate change, global warming?

DAVID HELVARG: Sure, Amy, Renee. First, my thoughts and agnostic prayers to the folks in Houston and southeast Texas, where again, we are seeing a natural disaster turn into human catastrophe by choices we make in terms of our energy choices, the pollutants we burn for energy and put into the atmosphere, as well as how we develop the coast and zoning choices.

I mean, Houston is essentially a zoning-free zone. And so, historic floodplains have been developed. That’s where Rice University, the Texas Medical Center, a lot of neighborhoods built up in these flood zones that are going to become more waterlogged as we see sea level rise in certain areas, like the Texas and Louisiana coast, South Florida, the tidelands of Virginia. You’re projecting now three to six feet or more of sea level rise in the century.

Maybe it has only been ten inches today. People are going to go, “Well, what’s ten inches?” But it could be the difference between floodwaters on your porch and in your living room. But it’s not just the tidal surge and sea level rise. It’s what we’re seeing—these rain events. With the warming ocean and atmosphere, you have more moisture in the atmosphere, which rains out more intensive pulses of rain. These rain events that we see massive flooding even disconnected with hurricanes and storms.

So last year, for example, Baton Rouge had massive rain pulses and storms. And when rain comes down so torrentially, the ground cannot absorb it. It backs up. And you had a flooding event right there in Houston last year that the Houston flood control district said was a one in 10,000-year rain event. Well, it’s a year later, and you’re having another one.

So clearly, what we’re seeing—I remember back in 2000, I was with—a scientist from the NASAAmes laboratory at Columbia was touring me through lower Manhattan with some folks from some island nations—Kiribati and the Marshalls—explaining the big 1993 nor’easter. And she said that yeah, one-in-a-century storms like that are now going to become decadal, happen every decade or more frequently. And since then, I was down at Katrina. We had Sandy. Now we have this hurricane. We are seeing the impacts.

Where back in the 1990s, there would be maybe four or five multibillion-dollar extreme weather events every year, NOAA is now recording 20 and 30 multimillion-dollar weather events happening in this country, and just this country alone. So that you’re seeing—luckily—with Katrina—the storms are different. The nature of the storms. Katrina, you had huge casualties. Over 1,800 killed. I think we will see luckily less casualties because of the slow and persistent rate of this storm. But probably much more damage.

This is going to be a $100 billion-plus storm. And not to—a lot of times you say, “Well, you’re taking advantage of people in distress by talking about the causes of why they are in distress.” The reality is, when you have two 10,000-year rain events in two years, this is the new normal. This is the new reality. And the challenge is how we address it. How rapidly we’re going to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Please continue this transcript, or to watch the full program, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/28/this_is_the_new_normal_inside