, Columnist
Another Way Climate Change Might Make Hurricanes Worse
To rising seas and warmer oceans, add rains that refuse to go away.
Four days can do a lot of damage.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
In a recent talk about his new book, “Scale,” physicist Geoffrey West described climate change as a form of entropy –- disorder that’s created as the price of all the order and creative energy pent up in cities. In this view, climate change is not, as some argue, just a euphemism for global warming. It’s a broader term that reflects the unpredictable, disorderly way global warming will affect the planet’s oceans and atmosphere.
In other words, we won’t be so lucky as to see a regular, incremental increase in the earth’s average temperature. Instead, we’re seeing rapid, erratic changes in weather patterns that people have counted on for centuries.