A state of
disaster has been declared in 31 flooded Texas counties as rivers in the region are cresting at historic highs.
Six people have died, up to four more people are missing, and hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in Houston as the Brazos River reached over 54 feet in Fort Bend County.
On the East Coast, the
National Hurricane Center declared that Tropical Depression Bonnie, which caused significant flash flooding in the American Southeast over Memorial Day weekend, has "revived" off the coast of North Carolina.
It's not just remarkable that Bonnie "revived" itself as a Tropical Depression - it's remarkable that 2016 is the
second year in a row that the Atlantic hurricane season has begun before June 1st.
Over in
Europe meanwhile, the French government issued an orange alert in response to days of torrential rains that brought the Seine's water level to over 5 meters.
As a result, the Louvre announced earlier today that it was not admitting any more visitors to the museum and that the museum will be closed to the public on Friday so that staff can prepare for the worst.
Nine people in total have died across northern Europe as a result of the storms and subsequent flooding: streets are submerged, schools have been forced to close, thousands of people have been evacuated, and others have been stranded on their rooftops.
The Loiret region in France alone has gotten six weeks of rainfall in three days, and the situation in Europe has been described as "worse than the floods of 1910", which cost France roughly $1.5 billion in today's dollars.
And the mainstream media in this country is committing malpractice with their coverage of these events.
The simple fact is, these storms are directly connected to global climate change.
More specifically, these storms are directly related to the "water vapor positive feedback loop".
Right now according to climate scientist
Kevin Trenberth, there is about 5% more water vapor in the atmosphere above the oceans than there was in 1968 when Richard Nixon was sworn in, thanks to the fact that the oceans have already warmed 1 degree.
We know that the planet is warming and that it's warming because of human activities: we rip fossil fuels out of the Earth and burn them into the atmosphere, we destroy our soils with industrial farming, and we clear cut carbon-rich rainforests to plant fields of monocrops.
All of those activities have contributed to unprecedented, and unnatural, global warming over the last century and a half.
And as a result, the planet's atmosphere can hold more moisture than it could have in the absence of man-made global warming.
That's because warmer systems can hold more moisture: think about how much stickier and wet it feels if it's 90 degree Fahrenheit at 90 percent humidity than it feels if it's 45 degree Fahrenheit at 90 percent humidity.
And water vapor acts just like any other greenhouse gas in the atmosphere: it reflects light and heat back in all directions, including back towards Earth.
This leads to the "water vapor positive feedback loop" that causes a dangerous amplification in warming over time.
A warmer planet can hold more moisture in the atmosphere, more moisture in the atmosphere leads to more warming, more warming means that the atmosphere can hold more moisture, and so on and so on.
