It is hard to keep up with what climate change is doing around the world. No one pays much attention to the typhoons that devastate Indonesia and India where hundreds of thousands of homes are washed out. No one pays much attention to the faraway islands that are slowly being flooded.
Well, let's look at a developed country instead, like Ireland, blasted by the results of climate change this past week.
Ireland just had 9 weeks of rain in three weeks and are on schedule for one-quarter of a year's rainfall in just one month.
So much rain fell last week that the dam outside of Cork City had to release water in the middle of the night with no warning to the people below who were about to get inundated.
Half of Cork City is flooded and 50,000 people are without tap water to drink or water to flush toilets.
Three times the water running down the Mississippi is now flowing down the river to Cork City.
The Shannon River is at a higher flood stage at any time since records began in 1932. It rose another 6 inches today alone, and all towns and villages along the Shannon are now in danger of flooding.
An estimated 460 tons of water per second on the Shannon River [is] now approaching Limerick city.
Just one link of many
Many people had no flood insurance and the insurance companies have already told us that premiums will soar for everyone and we will be lucky to still have any flood insurance available.
The government approved planning for houses and whole sub-divisions without any thought of flood plains, nor have they done much flood planning and prevention throughout the country.
The storms will get bigger, and wetter, and the winds will get stronger as the next years pass. This is climate change in action, folks. This is what climate change will do in a developed country.