In the wake of Hurricane Irma devastating Florida this week, an idea floated on Twitter deserves a wider airing. Why not name the monster hurricanes, the ones that are off the scale, after noted climate change denialists? They could start with Rush Limbaugh, who spent the days before Irma hit ranting that the coverage of the approaching hurricane was all part of a "liberal conspiracy", only to quietly leave town the day before the eye of the hurricane arrived.

But, seriously, does it not make a certain amount of sense? The legacy of those who continue to deny the reality of climate change – continuing with brain dead assertions like "the climate changes all the time, it's called the weather" – is a world ever more prone to such things as hurricanes. As The Economist noted this week, "There are now 400 extreme weather events every year, four times as many as in 1970."

Debris surrounds a destroyed structure in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Credit:AP

I get that denying it robustly, while attacking the scientists and politicians who say it is serious, brings ratings and lifts circulation and all the rest. I get that politicians can get voted in by denying it. I get that heaps of people get sucked in by the whole thing, and genuinely believe it is all a hoax. But sooner or later, they must all get what is happening.

Politico put it well a fortnight ago, as Houston was besieged: "In all of US history, there's never been a storm like Hurricane Harvey. That fact is increasingly clear, even though the rains are still falling and the water levels in Houston are still rising. But there's an uncomfortable point that, so far, everyone is skating around: We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn't care. Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like. More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn't want to take climate change seriously."