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.
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’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.