Climate Change Change?

Hurricane Jose is not going to hit land, but it is still causing enough trouble to warrant a tropical storm watch for several coastal communities along the U.S.'s eastern seaboard before it spins out to sea . . . and then back towards the coast as weaker post-tropical storm.  And then along comes Maria.

Hurricane Maria is headed to the same small islands in the West Indies that got pummeled by Irma, and it may go over Puerto Rico and Hispaniola as a Category 3 or higher.  If it does go there, the mountains on those islands could tear it up a bit.  Beyond that, well, computer projections have had it go everywhere from out to sea to hitting the Carolinas, making landfall on the southern tip of Florida before moving on to the northern Gulf Coast, and there may yet projection showing landfall in New York City by the time you read this.

Maybe the idea another hurricane of any consequence hitting the U.S. mainland or its Caribbean dependencies is what caused the Trump White House to suggest over the weekend that it's willing to re-engage in the Paris Agreement on climate change at a Montreal summit on the issue.  European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete has stated, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the United States "has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,"  hoping to find a solution more favorable to this country.

Here's my solution.  Get Donald Trump out of the White House.  Preferably in a straitjacket.

Trump, meanwhile, denied that he's softening his position on the Paris Agreement to make it look like he's not backtracking.  But dig this. He recently said that he had never seen hurricanes as large and as powerful as Harvey and Irma and didn't even know there was a fifth category for hurricane strength on the Saffir-Simpson scale.  And he probably didn't know there was such a thing as the Saffir-Simpson scale.  But just when you thought he'd come around on climate change and how it's causing these really nasty storms, he backtracked and started talking about similarly powerful storms dating back to before his own time - "the thirties and the forties," and also "the teens" - the 1910s, to be exact.  But that was exact as he got.  Oh, he's right about the thirties - the 1938 Long Island Express hurricane that destroyed Providence, Rhode Island is one example - but he didn't actually offer that particular hurricane - or any other from before his birth in June 1946 - as an example.  Nor did he concede that most of the Atlantic season in decades past had fewer storms, with seasons like the 2017 season being anomalies.  Screw the nineteen-teens anyway -we have to deal with the twenty-teens! We have to deal with the here and now! And that means dealing with  climate change.

Yes, I still think it.  The United States deserves swift and severe punishment for nixing the Paris Agreement.  And God is indeed punishing this country - with Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, dishing out the punishment in the form of these hurricanes.  Texas, Florida, the Southeast . . . is the Northeast next?   If not this year, maybe next  . . ..