Wow - Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017

This is what Donald Trump tweeted after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Although it offers assurance to those who lost everything to the hurricane, it’s far being true, especially with global warming and climate change.

To understand what Hurricane Harvey means in years to come, we first need to understand what a once in 500 year flood means. People assume that because Harvey hit, there won’t be another hurricane like it for another 500 years. This is not the case.  A once in 500 year flood is shorthand term used by experts. It actually means that there is one chance in 500 per year that a flood like Harvey will strike. And, with global warming and climate change, it is quite possible that these “once in 500 years floods” could happen one year after another.

“...The probability of them (devastating storms like Harvey) occurring has increased substantially because of climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “What used to be a 500-year event has become a 50- or 100-year event.”

As the storms occur more frequently, they are also becoming more violent. Mr. Regalado, the republican mayor of Miami, had to conduct a rushed evacuation in the face of Hurricane Irma. He believes that “if this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.”

The Trump Administration has dismissed climate change as fake and Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has said that “to use time and effort to address it (climate change and global warming) at this point is very, very insensitive to the people in Florida.”

Hunkering down for Hurricane Irma, Leonard Berry, the former director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University, disagrees. He believes that, in order to protect the U.S. people from more storms like Hurricane Harvey, we need to address climate change and global warming. “One should be sensitive, but not stupid,” he says.

Many scientists and environmentalists hope that, because of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, more people will begin to concern themselves with global warming and climate change.

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote in an email as Harvey hit Texas: “The most pernicious and dangerous myth we’ve bought into when it comes to climate change is not the myth that it isn’t real or humans aren’t responsible. It’s the myth that it doesn’t matter to me. And that is exactly the myth that Harvey shatters.”