Ike was apparently not as bad as it could have been, but these pictures of the devastation are nevertheless astounding.
AP Photo/Pool, Smiley N. Pool
There’s a debate going around on whether environmentalists have gone too far in linking extreme weather events to global warming, or whether they haven’t gone far enough.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
I’ll keep my opinion to myself, and instead make the high-minded point that we surely do need to get a lot more serious about adaptation to global warming’s effects.
AP Photo/Richard Alan Hannon
A large amount of climate change is already baked into the system, and as events such as hurricanes make clear, the human toll can be enormous, even in wealthy countries like the U.S.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum
Does it really matter whether global warming is to blame for these storms? What we need is better land use decisions to keep these people from building in flood zones in the first place. Same goes for New Orleans, Mississippi River Valley, and floodplains around the world. Can you imagine how much trash and pollution gets dumped in our waterways when businesses and homes get flooded like this? Responsible landowners pay the price of degraded water quality and having to bail out people who made a bad real estate decision.