Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Most Dangerous Storm in US History

Listening to the radio and reading the news on the internet has been pretty scary today. Besides the horrific damage caused by the category 5-plus storm (I made up the 'plus' part, but the Beauford scale tops off at 5) to the Leeward Islands. I really fear for what will happen to the people of Puerto Rico, who have been ill-served by the United States government for too long. I have a lot of Puerto Rican friends, I value their culture, and I have long felt that our government has to bail out this beleaguered American territory. Florida also looks to be destined for an unprecedented boning with several models suggesting that the storm will barrel right up the urethra of America's dong.

As if Irma's not bad enough, the fact that tropical storms Jose and Katia are also at large is enough to give one the creeping horrors:




It gets worse though- the party in control of the executive and legislative branches of government denies anthropogenic climate change and opposes regulations which would curb carbon emissions. To compound things, this party of small government had sought to slash FEMA's budget, while the agency is nearly broke, and is set to continue its debt-ceiling brinksmanship. This is exactly what the country does not need in the teeth of what could be a series of four massive blows to its southern coastal regions.

Hurricane Irma is the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, but it's got nothing on the most dangerous storm ever to hit the United States... the Category 45 shitstorm which hit Washington D.C. last January.

5 comments:

  1. Irma has already busted up Le Chateau des Palmiers (a property Trump was looking to sell, but over valued) and some models (and Twitter posters) are looking at whether Irma strikes Palm Beach especially. I don't root for these things (I leave that to Evangelical types like Jim Bakker who want to sell unpalatable food buckets that just need heat and water to people who in an emergency, won't necessarily have ready access to heat and water) but I would be a teensy quality of giddy if Mar-a-Lago and Rush Limbaugh's homestead got wrecked--and I am both sad I think that way and am also still thinking it would be a defining moment that could fuck denialism, so--(nondenominational/agnostic) Prayers for everyone but Rush and Donald. Who actually do need Mother Nature's slap upside the head.

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  2. It's amazing how these creeps bring out the worst in all of us, especially their own supporters.

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  3. We've lost TWO major cities in 12 years. That shouldn't happen. If you can still claim to 'deny' carbon-driven climate change, you're simply lying. No one is actually that stupid unless it's willful stupidity. Climate change denial itself doesn't matter - it's the underlying economic belief that we should knowingly sacrifice tomorrow for today's profits.

    I honestly wish we'd just ignore the denials - they aren't the problem - and start looking for economic solutions that don't include the actual words 'climate change'.

    It's also pretty amazing how quickly solar and wind generation have reached cost parity globally, and how fast the adoption of electric vehicles is proceeding.

    In so many ways the damage is done - you can't just vacuum up the carbon that's already in the atmosphere - but the extent to which it actually seems to be a self-correcting system is pretty amazing...

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  4. The real tragedy is the massive subsidies that we have put in place for the fossil fuel industry- hell, even the two Iraq wars were fought over petroleum sources, taxpayers funding the armed wing of ExxonMobil, BP, and the like. As a species, we need to subsidize the renewable power industries.

    The best way to capture carbon is reforestation- trees are the best long-term storage for carbon.

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  5. It's amazing how these creeps bring out the worst in all of us, especially their own supporters.


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