Hurricane Irma made landfall on the Carribean islands on Wednesday, against everyone's hopes of it dying at sea. It is now rushing towards Florida, with an intensity estimated to surpass Hurricane Katrina, causing huge damage and loss of lives. At the wake of its devastation, Trump's constant denial of climate change emerges as ironic and irresponsible.
Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, US, on August 25, bringing large-scale devastation and loss of property. Merely days later, Hurricane Irma has ravaged Caribbean islands, making its way fast towards Florida. The French weather service has said that Irma is the first hurricane to maintain Category 5 intensity for so long, breaking the 1980 record of Hurricane Allen.
Since long before being elected POTUS, Donald Trump has maintained that climate change is fictitious. He has expressed such views in more than 100 tweets, sparking debates on climate change and global warming on social media, often going against scientific findings and geographical evidence.
However, research suggests otherwise. Scientists from Germany and UK have said that climate change played a big role in making Irma stronger and more destructive. "Unfortunately, the physicality is very clear: Hurricanes get their destructive energy from the warmth of the ocean, and the region's water temperatures are super elevated," said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in a statement to "Climate Changed."
US President Donald Trump tweeted about Hurricane Irma that he is "watching it closely," and it seems to be the largest storm recorded in the Atlantic. His views on climate change, however, still remain sharply contrasted with scientific data and expert opinions, in spite of being attacked viciously on Twitter multiple times for his views. So far, there has been no reaction from his side on the new findings.
