I posted on Facebook about hurricane Helene hitting Asheville North Carolina and how climate change resulted in one of the most severe storms and disasters we have ever seen in American history. This public school teacher in Florida proceeded to message me privately to tell me that climate change is fake, and how I need to get real because climate change supposedly had nothing to do with Western North Carolina looking like the setting for the next season of Fallout TV series. There’s no other way to put it, honestly. I have seen so many pictures and videos of the damage, it is simply astonishing. I have never seen something so gruesome and horrific in my whole life…
It’s honestly crazy that there are teachers, who are responsible for educating other people, and this is the kind of stuff that they are telling people.
Have you fact-checked the numbers? These people regularly lie and just make up numbers. Idk. I mean we also have plenty other evidence for climate change. For example humanity owns thermometers. And climate is a bit more than just category 5 hurricanes within the USA. So even if the numbers are correct… Which they probably aren’t… The glaciers are melting anyways and the more frequent droughts and floodings still happen.
Edit: I believe here are the correct numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes#Climatological_statisticsOne glance at the statistics with the damages should be enough. The other statistics are a bit harder to read. But since that teacher doesn’t even know the difference between the words ‘weather’ and ‘climate’… I’m not sure if they’re able to learn more about the facts, anyways.
There’s a lot more all time records from a long time ago because they didn’t have the ability to measure things properly and no way for anybody to call bs. It’s possible that there were far less cat 5 hurricanes than reported, but “category 5” sells newspapers.
She may well be correct with her numbers, I’m too lazy to check. But the Saffir-Simpson scale only measures wind speed. Makes for a fair thumbnail sketch, but doesn’t say much about the actual effects on the ground. For example; a slow moving CAT-3 can easily do more damage than a fast passing CAT-5. Keep in mind, Helene was only a CAT-2 by the time it hit NC, something we laugh about here in Florida. But it was huge, slow and wet. And due to the geography, well, flooding. Florida is so flat that water just drains out, nothing to channel it.
I have seen so many pictures and videos of the damage
I’ll just add this, nothing you see, or can see, in the media does justice to what it’s like living in the aftermath. My ex-FIL was in the Mississippi Guard. Two tours or Iraq, two Bronze Stars. What he saw and did after Katrina gave him PTSD and he abandoned his wife of 32-years and his daughter. Picture destruction that the United States military struggles to push through. House in the road? They fucking chainsawed them and pushed them to the sides. Stuff like that.
Ivan was my “war” and I drove MS from the Gulf Coast to Hattiesburg after Katrina. At this point I’m numb to it and the pictures all look the same.
Even if her numbers are right, it’s 16 every 45 years, then all of a sudden it’s 8 in 8 years. That should be pretty worrying to her.
I really think we desperately need to overhaul the teaching profession in a massive way. Triple their salary so that the job is more sought after by better people. The only people who stay in teaching are 1) truly dedicated people who have other financial support and 2) deadwood like this FL dipshit to whom it is just a job.
An average young person of any talent will exit teaching for greener pastures as soon as they can, leading to accumulation of this deadwood, which makes the profession even less appealing to talented folks.
There’s another category:
People who are passionate about teaching but just aren’t that terribly bright. I had a few elementary education major friends in college and they were super fun, definitely motivated, sharp enough to teach elementary schoolers, but… bless their hearts…
I would love to teach kids. I take any opportunity I can to mentor people at work, but in a school setting would be super cool. The pay cut relative to what I make now just isn’t worth it. Maybe in another decade when we have enough set aside…
Because actually, the biggest change came on May 9th, 2013…
If I recall my understanding correctly, it’s 1) because there hasn’t been consistently this much CO2 in the atmosphere since an era when the planet whose climate was fundamentally different and 2) that this is an escape velocity type thing, where it becomes harder and harder for us to get back under 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, because of how long it takes for CO2 to be absorbed. Thus, climate change will spin out of control far faster in this new, different environment.
So literally, yes, we were climate changing, but post 2013 things are indeed a lot more grim and the outlook less clear.
These people are fools who are making a conscious choice to ingest information that would challenge their worldview.
I’d argue the biggest change was last year. Because of the banning/restrictions of sulfuric emissions from ships trading in the Pacific, a huge quantity of smog was cleared from the atmosphere. Unfortunately for all of us, that smog had been reflecting some sunlight and depressing the effects of climate change in the short term. While those sulfur-based emissions clear out of our atmosphere in as little as 2-3 weeks, carbon emissions take centuries to fully clear out of the atmosphere.
In other words, we had been unintentionally geoengineering the climate to be slightly cooler before 2023. That’s why it was such a huge jump in temperature last year and has no signs of reversing course. The good news about this is that it means that we can geoengineer our climate to be cooler in the short term in order to prevent greater catastrophe because we already were. The bad news is that we likely will have to.
Got it, pump sulfur into the atmosphere to stop climate change.
This is too infuriating for mildlyinfuriating imo lol
Cross posting to facepalm, extremelyinfuriating, or rage does seem more appropriate.
goes to find a table of Category 5 storms
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
This has the number of hurricane strikes on the US in each strength category, binned by decade.
Cat as in category, not the animal. That did not make sense at first.
“You might not believe in climate change, but your insurance company sure does!”
Climate change is it is portrayed by the media is BS. It is more of a tool to get people all wound up. I’ve known people who are on the verge of a mental breakdown because the media is constantly telling them the Apocalypse is happening.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not arguing that a changing climate isn’t bad. It is very much something that needs to be addressed like all environmental issues. However, in my experience the climate change people are the the ones who are cutting down the rainforest to build “climate friendly” wind turbines. It is a complex issue and honestly more of a belief than a science.
Yep plenty of people in the media miss use climate change to green wash (and green light) new projects.
Its a shame. We really need PSAs or something to help straighten out public consensus of what exactly climate change is and what it causes.
But then we’d have to consume less, and they don’t want that.
lets not forget that one of the methods of eroding public education is by reducing teacher education requirements.
they can pay less educated people less, and they do. you barely need a degree to be a teacher in the united states, and it pays so little it would be funny if it wasnt so incredibly sad.
you barely need a degree to be a teacher in the united states
In most cases of actual teachers in the government run, public school setting, who were trained as teachers, they end up having to get a Masters degree and additional continuing education for as long as they remain a teacher. However, they are desperately under-paid and under-supported.
Once you get into private schools, especially those that are run by churches, all bets are off. This is just one of the many reasons that not even a single dollar of taxpayer money should be going to charter/private schools.
You also have stupid places that let anyone with some random skill teach with the belief they have the capacity to be a teacher and that’s just not true. Teaching is actually a very specialized skill that most people simply don’t have. You can be a brilliant mathematician and a horrible teacher. You may be the world’s best welder (with all of the requisite knowledge of metallurgy, engineering, safety, etc.) and be a horrible teacher.
If you’re going to bad-mouth teachers, then please be more specific than just a lazy trope. Another urban legend that needs to go away is the idea that teachers only work 9 months out of the year.
i am speaking from experience working in a large, k-12 environment and watching brand new teachers discuss their degrees, and their pay.
In most cases of actual teachers in the government run, public school setting, who were trained as teachers, they end up having to get a Masters degree and additional continuing education for as long as they remain a teacher.
incredibly community specific, and rules are often completely bent or ignored
Another urban legend that needs to go away is the idea that teachers only work 9 months out of the year.
i dont know anyone who believes this old nonsense.
Starve the Beast. The conservatives use it for everything. Run on government not working, and then working to dismantle government to prove it.
The important follow-up is to rinse/repeat. This doesn’t stop until the wealth redistribution does, and we regress to corporate town serfdom.
The people that vote for this want their elected government to be so small they’ll be ruled by corporate overlords solely interested in extracting their wealth.
They even made a tv show out of a teacher with cancer.
This is the same people that don’t get that the fires we’ve seen in many part of the world is also part of climate change. Why deny something that science has been telling us for decades at this point.
But we shouldn’t be supprised when politicians in the US are banning books that don’t align witb their world views. It’s pathetic.
Climate change denial is reality denial.
