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Harvey was not in Houston either.
Nor Maria in Puerto Rico.
Yet we continue to use this term.
Doing this – especially in the era of climate change – is misleading, even dangerous, according to several disaster experts and climate scientists I've reached by phone and on Twitter.
"The phrase" natural disaster "is an attempt to blame the blame where the blame really does not rest," said Kerry A. Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at MIT and world expert on hurricanes .
So what should we say instead?
And where, if not with nature, should we blame?
You have to consider climate change
There are essentially two main answers to the question of blame.
One is climate change.
"The best scientific information we have at the moment is that the probabilities of these intense hurricanes – from the point of view of wind and water – are increasing in many places due to global warming", said Emanuel.
The rain associated with these storms intensifies, he said, because "warmer air retains more water vapor than a colder air." The sea level is rising as the oceans warm up and the land ice in the Arctic, for example, bottom in the ocean – and that means more damage, and probably death, associated with storm surges and coastal flooding. In addition, hurricanes are expected to intensify more rapidly in a warmer world, making them more difficult to predict.
"There is a fairly strong consensus [among scientists] that the frequency of high profile events like Michael, in most parts of the world, is expected to increase due to global warming, "said Emanuel.
"The climate is changing, which means that the current climate is having an impact on time, there is a human footprint on that," said Kevin A. Reed, assistant professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. from Stony Brook University. . "So, to some extent, there is a human footprint on individual weather events."
Scientists begin to better search for human "fingerprints"
This is a preliminary assessment that Reed is pursuing with further research. But the fact is that we can not pretend that climate change is a distant threat, he said.
"Climate change has arrived and now has an impact on storms," he said by phone. "The impacts of climate change are very real."
The place of residence of the people also counts – as well as the preparation
"Hazard is natural, but there is no disaster if there are no people / buildings in danger," Andrea Thompson, deputy editor of Scientific American, wrote on Twitter. "Climate change is a component, more clearly with the rise in sea level, but the explosion of the coastal population means a lot more risk of disaster."
Emanuel, an expert on cyclones at MIT, said the global population exposed to cyclones has tripled since the 1970s, as more and more people move to coastal areas and cyclone-prone areas.
"The problem in the United States is that we are stopping not only adaptation, but that we are engaged in what you might call a" negative adaptation "to the risks posed by storms and climate change," Emanuel said. . "The government – both federally and at the state level – has strong policies in place that encourage people to live and build in risky places."
Examples, he said, include the national flood insurance program, which is funded by taxpayers, and state-level policies that cap the amount that people pay for flood insurance.
Even very simple changes to building standards and zoning could make a difference in terms of readiness, said Chmutina, speaker in the UK. For example, placing wall outlets higher on the walls reduces the risk of power outage during a flood, she said. But overall, citizens and governments do not opt for these preventive measures because they are slightly more expensive initially, she said, although some adaptations could save lives and to make money.
"When we say this phrase," natural disaster ", we claim that we are not responsible for creating a disaster," she said. "We attribute everything to nature, we make nature responsible for disasters, and it is not."
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, she stressed, argued this point of view in the 1700s.
"[N]ature has not built twenty thousand houses six to seven floors, "he wrote in a letter in response to a debate on a deadly earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal.[I]If the inhabitants of this big city had been more equitably distributed and lodged slightly, the damage would have been much smaller, if not without doubt. "
What should we say instead?
OK, so if you admit that these disasters and their consequences are no longer really "natural" (and have never been), what is the best term to use instead?
John Upton, a writer from Climate Central, suggested deleting the term "natural" for the benefit of "disaster".
"I know it's a mouthful," she wrote on Twitter, "but I think it's worth it because it corrects the misconception and presents the facts, all in a."
Reed, Stony Brook's teacher, simply suggested "extreme events".
Experts said the important thing is that we, humans, accept some wrongs.
And then use that knowledge to avoid the suffering associated with future storms.
