Michael Mann on climate change, Hurricane Beryl today (transcript)

Video here: Michael Mann on Climate Change and Beryl (JULY 6 2024) 

Quotes:

Beryl went from a minor tropical disturbance to a hurricane within 24 hours, soon becoming the earliest Category 5 hurricane in history

The warmer those Waters and the deeper those warm Waters, the faster intensification you get

Extreme heat is sometimes called a silent killer; it takes a higher toll than any other weather related phenomenon.

A new normal is sort of a best case scenario. We can prevent things from getting worse if...

TRANSCRIPT

0:00

Q:  Joining me now is Dr. Michael Mann, presidential distinguished professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Science Sustainability in the media. He's also the author of The New Climate War The Fight To Take Back Our Planet, Dr. Mann. It's always so good to see you. Look this storm Beryl set a number of Records due to its strength and for being a hurricane so early in the season. What do you account for this strong storm arriving so soon?

0:27

Mann:  yeah thanks Katie it's good to be with you, and there were number of things that we saw with Beryl that are indicative of the way that very warm ocean temperatures from Human caused warming is impacting these storms. It intensified extremely rapidly. It went from a minor tropical disturbance to a hurricane within 24 hours and then within another 24 hours was a major hurricane, a category 4 hurricane, soon becoming the earliest Category 5 hurricane in history. And one of the things that we know is that-

1:00

Very warm ocean temperatures- the heat in the upper ocean is what intensifies these storms. And the warmer those Waters and the deeper those warm Waters, the faster intensification you get. And that's really the problem. Because when these storms intensify this rapidly, it's very difficult to know what to prepare for.

Q:  Dr Mann, our infrastructure, our current infrastructure isn't built to withstand these kinds of weather systems right. I mean, there's this domino effect that happens with climate change, this atmosphere holds more water, the warmer water….

1:52

Dr. Mann, tell our viewers why this isn't quote just hot weather for the summer, there's actually some very real kind consequences that happen from climate change.

MANN: Yeah often they have compound effects where a tropical storm becomes a hurricane. It demands that we bring resources to bear. Emergency responders need to deal with that crisis. But we've got other crises. We've got wildfires out west, we've got extreme flooding in the Midwest, extreme heat around the rest of the country.

2:24

And so it's really taxing our resources, it's taxing our ability to contend with these simultaneous disasters. And of course there's the Lost lives. Extreme heat is sometimes called a silent killer because it's not as dramatic as as some ways some some means of mortality. But it has a higher toll, takes a higher toll than just about any other weather related phenomenon. And we're we're seeing loss of life.

2:52

We're seeing massive loss of property. This storm is going to cost us billions of dollars. And we hear from the critics well it's going to be too expensive to do something about climate change. No, it's too expensive not to do something about climate change.

Q: Dr. Mann,  we want to educate but we also want to be a solutions-based place. Tell us is there anything that can be done to try to reverse this trend of the more frequent and stronger storms, these more powerful storms?

03:22

Or is this just the new normal?

Mann: Yeah well a new normal is sort of a best case scenario. We can prevent things from getting worse if we reduce carbon emissions dramatically and we do have the Adaptive capacity to deal with things the way they are. If we let them get much worse, that will really challenge our adaptive capacity. And so we have to stop the warming of the planet that is behind these events. The way we do that is by reducing carbon emissions. And the way we can all make a real difference here this is an election year.

03:52

And this next election will determine the course of climate action here in the United States and for the rest of the world. Because the US has to take leadership. And we couldn't have a more Stark Choice before us. On the one hand a candidate in Donald Trump who denies that climate change exists and is going to turn over our government to polluters. And on the other hand Joe Biden a president who's shown real commitment to engaging with the rest of the world so that we can tackle this existential problem.

04:22

So people need yo turn out to vote for politicians who will support action rather than politicians who are simply supporting the polluting interests.

Q:  Dr. Michael Mann, as always thanks for being here and making us smarter

4:36

END TRANSCRIPT

Video here: Michael Mann Discussing Climate Change & Hurricane Beryl with Katie Phang (JULY 6 2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=hsp39jazu00&t=218s

Posted by Kay Ebeling