What you can and can’t say about climate change and Hurricane Harvey

With a major hurricane forecast to make landfall in the U.S. for the first time since 2005, we may be fated for another debate about how climate change does, and doesn’t, affect these kinds of events.
It would be strange to ignore the role of a changing climate when it comes to hurricanes, since they themselves have a climatology – that is, certain conditions make them more likely to form and also to worsen. But it’s August, and the Gulf of Mexico can certainly sustain fierce h