It doesn’t take much to make a hurricane worse

Phillip Hawley (“There are lots of ways to look at climate change,” Sept. 2) writes that “there is no hard evidence to correlate higher temperatures with storms such as Harvey.” In fact, there is abundant scientific evidence that our fossil fuel emissions made Harvey much more destructive.

Warm air holds more water vapor (4 percent per degree F), and the Gulf of Mexico has warmed more than 2 F under human influence. Furthermore, fossil fuel emissions have caused loss of much Arctic sea ice, leading storms to “stall” in one place for longer. Much of the damage caused by Harvey was because it “stalled” over Houston for many days. Damages increase…