#increase in major hurricanes

[tomorrowusa]

June 1st marks the official start of the Atlantic basin hurricane season. Though there is now a pre-season which starts on May 15th.

It's predicted to be near average this year. Though what is considered average has been creeping up in recent decades.

CNN tracked two hurricane season outlooks this year: the forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which was released last week, and another from researchers at Colorado State University, who have been issuing seasonal forecasts for more than 37 years.

NOAA officials are predicting an average hurricane season, with 12 to 17 named tropical storms, five to nine of which could become hurricanes. They expect as many of four of those could strengthen into major hurricanes – category 3 or stronger.

A slightly more optimistic prediction from tropical cyclone Dr. research scientist Dr. Philip J. Klotzbach.

Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State, said in April his group was predicting a slightly below-average season this year: 13 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

The key difference between tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes lies in their wind speeds and the level of organization within the system.

While a tropical depression represents the earliest stage of cyclone development, named tropical storms exhibit more structure and stronger winds. Hurricanes — the most powerful and dangerous of the three — possess the strongest winds and a well-defined eye, making them capable of causing extensive damage over large areas.

According to the National Hurricane Center, there is already a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico with a 70% chance of tropical cyclone formation in the next two days. Look for updates here.

Even a season which starts off calm can take an abrupt turn.

In 1992 there had been no named storms for the first 11 weeks of the season. Then on August 17th a nondescript tropical wave in the Atlantic became the first named storm of the year. Rapid intensification transformed this storm into Category 5 Hurricane Andrew. It cut through the south of Florida like a buzz saw and had a second act as it stormed through the Gulf and made a second landfall in Louisiana.

Hurricane Andrew

Andrew's style of rapid intensification has become more common in the 21st century.

This season should not be as bad as 2020 when they ran out of hurricane names and then burned through half of the Greek alphabet.

Yep, one tropical storm in 2020 even made landfall in Portugal. 🇵🇹

Warm seas give hurricanes more strength and make their formation more likely. The unmistakable warming of the Atlantic is responsible for the spike in major hurricanes this century.

[essektheylyss]

okay the thing with the coast poll is that my tags were mostly joking cuz I do expect it to be a contest of where you've lived and I respect that so I'm not actually mad HOWEVER I saw some of the comments and as a person who has lived on both, I am thereby qualified to ask, IN WHAT FUCKING UNIVERSE IS THE EAST COAST MORE TEMPERATE. WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR DEFINITION OF TEMPERATE.

[moonlight-at-dawn]

They can also show up in semi-inland spots like channels, even narrow ones.

Near where I grew up there was a looping channel around a small island, and the mouths of the channel went to the ocean. The mouths break up a lot of the waves and it's only maybe half a mile wide, so it's pretty calm looking, even when choppy.

Family was clamming on the island, I was feeling tired so I waded into the water to float, and picked the area that looked calmest. A few steps in, next thing I knew, I was dragged under so fast and so deep my ears ached for weeks, then was suddenly 15 or 20 feet out from shore.

Fortunately when I panicked, I did immediately go into float mode, and fortunately the rip current didn't go super far because of the location, but it's scary as hell and you'll never forget that lesson if you survive it.

As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.

[coldalbion]

Not Flirting

This is NOT FLIRTING.

The very fact that the media say "flirting" is indicative of the fact that the cultural ideas we have around value, improvement, morality, ability and functionality are *rooted* in a a framework which is ableist and eugenic in nature.

Fundamentally, the idea that there are "good genes" and "bad genes" is saying there are "good" forms of embodymindedness and "bad" forms, and that we should remove or reduce the bad and increase the good.

This is biopolitics which is at the root of 19th, 20th and 21st century processes and horrors, and is not *just* racist, but is one of the major ORIGINS of racism as it manifests today, as well as a wellspring of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, colonialism and capitalism.

We are enmeshed in the world eugenics and its proponents thought up, and wrought. It is so prevalent beneath the surface of how we relate to the world in terms of growth, progress, science etc, that we are like fish swimming in it.

This IS NOT JUST TRUMP. This is the ongoing pandemic, the manfacture of debility in marginalised populations for the benefit of those at the levers of power. This is the dismissal of Appalachian lives and folks in rural areas as low-intelligence inbred hicks who "should have known"/"should have moved" in the face of hurricanes. This the way standardised testing structures education on pass fail and grade curves. On and on, with countless more manifestations and iterations.

**We live in a eugenicised society.**

One that frames who should be improved, and how, on the basis of trajectories which begin by evalulating a being on how much it conforms to a certain set of criteria. We never ask where those criteria come from. We never consider that the liberal humanist agenda might also create folks who *don't fit*, in order to mark those who do.

We should. We should ask ourselves where "the human" even comes from.

[ID :A screenshot from The Guardian's liveblog coverage of the US Election, which reads: "Flirting with eugenics, Trump says: ‘We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now’ In an interview earlier today with conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump used terminology associated with eugenics to attack migrants. The remark came as the former president discussed the alleged harm done by new arrivals to the United States, saying many were “murderers”. “Now, a murderer, it’s in their genes,” Trump continued. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” It was language similar to the beliefs of eugenics, which emerged in the late 19th century and held that human ills could be combatted through selective breeding. The theory is today regarded as both inaccurate and racist."]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

"Russia, Russia, Russia. It's always Russia!"

October 9, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

On a day of major political stories, the Earth is reminding us that we are guests on this planet subject to our collective good behavior over the long term. Hurricane Milton is threatening Florida like no other storm in the last century. Millions are (wisely) evacuating in the face of strong winds and a record storm surge that will inundate coastal areas.

Two months ago, Trump joked about human-caused climate change creating “more beachfront property.” In 2021, 175 House Republicans and 35 Senate Republicans voted to defund FEMA. See MTN News, A Whopping 175 House Republicans Voted Against FEMA Funding in 2021. Many of those lawmakers are now criticizing FEMA for being overwhelmed and under-resourced. Last week, Speaker Mike Johnson refused to call a special session of the House to enact emergency supplemental funding for FEMA.

Jokes aside, the substantive policy of the Republican Party is to promote fossil fuels and undermine green energy. See Center for American Progress, Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Global Climate Action. One of Trump's first acts in 2017 was to serve notice that the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, and one of Joe Biden’s first acts was to rescind that notice. If Trump is re-elected, we should expect that Trump will again seek to withdraw from global efforts to fight human-caused climate change. See NBC News, Mike Johnson won't commit to bringing House back before the election for more hurricane relief.

The weather is not the climate and record-breaking weather events are not (in themselves) climate change. But acceleration in global climate trends over time are evidence of human caused climate change. Indeed, the tendency of hurricanes to rapidly increase in intensity—like Hurricane Milton—is part of a new trend in hurricane behavior. See NBC News, Hurricane Milton's rapid intensification is part of a climate-fueled trend.  

Climate change is maddeningly difficult because its effects are difficult to track—until they are not. We may be living through one of those moments in which the effects of climate change are undeniably manifest. The question facing us is whether we have the capacity to maintain our concern and sense of urgency after the water has receded and the news crews have moved to the next breaking story. We need the ability to engage in long-term thinking and the patience to allow solutions to work over decades (or longer).

Many worthy and effective organizations are focused on fighting human-caused climate change. I have previously endorsed and appeared before Third Act, an organization started by Bill McKibben. Third Act describes itself as “a community of Americans over sixty determined to change the world for the better. Third Act harnesses an unparalleled generational power to safeguard our climate and democracy.” Check out Third Act—or highlight your climate focused organization in the Comments section.

In the meantime, my wife and I express our concern and empathy for the hundreds of thousands of Floridians affected by Hurricane Milton. Be safe and follow the guidance of authorities!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[nasa]

Why Isn’t Every Year the Warmest Year on Record?

This just in: 2022 effectively tied for the fifth warmest year since 1880, when our record starts. Here at NASA, we work with our partners at NOAA to track temperatures across Earth’s entire surface, to keep a global record of how our planet is changing.

Overall, Earth is getting hotter.

The warming comes directly from human activities – specifically, the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. We started burning fossil fuels in earnest during the Industrial Revolution. Activities like driving cars and operating factories continue to release greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, where they trap heat in the atmosphere.

So…if we’re causing Earth to warm, why isn’t every year the hottest year on record?

As 2022 shows, the current global warming isn’t uniform. Every single year isn’t necessarily warmer than every previous year, but it is generally warmer than most of the preceding years. There’s a warming trend.

Earth is a really complex system, with various climate patterns, solar activity, and events like volcanic eruptions that can tip things slightly warmer or cooler.

Climate Patterns

While 2021 and 2022 continued a global trend of warming, they were both a little cooler than 2020, largely because of a natural phenomenon known as La Niña.

La Niña is one third of a climate phenomenon called El Niño Southern Oscillation, also known as ENSO, which can have significant effects around the globe. During La Niña years, ocean temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean cool off slightly. La Niña’s twin, El Niño brings warmer temperatures to the central and eastern Pacific. Neutral years bring ocean temperatures in the region closer to the average.

El Niño and La Niña affect more than ocean temperatures – they can bring changes to rainfall patterns, hurricane frequency, and global average temperature.

We’ve been in a La Niña mode the last three, which has slightly cooled global temperatures. That’s one big reason 2021 and 2022 were cooler than 2020 – which was an El Niño year.

Overall warming is still happening. Current El Niño years are warmer than previous El Niño years, and the same goes for La Niña years. In fact, enough overall warming has occurred that most current La Niña years are warmer than most previous El Niño years. This year was the warmest La Niña year on record.

Solar Activity

Our Sun cycles through periods of more and less activity, on a schedule of about every 11 years. Here on Earth, we might receive slightly less energy — heat — from the Sun during quieter periods and slightly more during active periods.

At NASA, we work with NOAA to track the solar cycle. We kicked off a new one – Solar Cycle 25 – after solar minimum in December 2019. Since then, solar activity has been slightly ramping up.

Because we closely track solar activity, we know that over the past several decades, solar activity hasn't been on the rise, while greenhouse gases have. More importantly, the "fingerprints" we see on the climate, including temperature changes in the upper atmosphere, don't fit the what we'd expect from solar-caused warming. Rather they look like what we expect from increased greenhouse warming, verifying a prediction made decades ago by NASA.

Volcanic Eruptions

Throughout history, volcanoes have driven major shifts in Earth’s climate. Large eruptions can release water vapor — a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide — which traps additional warmth within our atmosphere.

On the flip side, eruptions that loft lots of ash and soot into the atmosphere can temporarily cool the climate slightly, by reflecting some sunlight back into space.

Like solar activity, we can monitor volcanic eruptions and tease out their effect on variations in our global temperature.

At the End of the Day, It’s Us

Our satellites, airborne missions, and measurements from the ground give us a comprehensive picture of what’s happening on Earth every day. We also have computer models that can skillfully recreate Earth’s climate.

By combining the two, we can see what would happen to global temperature if all the changes were caused by natural forces, like volcanic eruptions or ENSO. By looking at the fingerprints each of these climate drivers leave in our models, it’s perfectly clear: The current global warming we’re experiencing is caused by humans.

For more information about climate change, visit climate.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - March 13, 2023

🐝 - Did you hear about the honeybee vaccine? It's creating quite the buzz! But seriously, it's a major breakthrough in the fight against American foulbrood and could save billions of bees.

1. Transgender health care is now protected in Minnesota

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order protecting and supporting access to gender-affirming health care for LGBTQ people in the state, amidst Republican-backed efforts across the country to limit transgender health care. The order upholds the essential values of One Minnesota where all people, including members of the LGBTQIA+ community, are safe, celebrated, and able to live lives full of dignity and joy.

Numerous medical organizations have said that access to gender-affirming care is essential to the health and wellness of gender diverse people, while states like Tennessee, Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Florida have passed policies or laws restricting transgender health care.

2. First vaccine for honeybees could save billions

The US government has approved the world's first honeybee vaccine to fight against American foulbrood, a bacterial disease that destroys bee colonies vital for crop pollination.

Developed by biotech company Dalan Animal Health, the vaccine integrates some of the foulbrood bacteria into royal jelly, which is then fed to the queen by the worker bees, resulting in the growing bee larvae developing immunity to foulbrood. The vaccine aims to limit the damage caused by the infectious disease, for which there is currently no cure, and promote the development of vaccines for other diseases affecting bees.

3. Teens rescued after days stranded in California snowstorm: "We were already convinced we were going to die"

The recent snowstorms in California have resulted in dangerous conditions for hikers and residents in mountain communities. Two teenage hikers were rescued by the San Bernardino County sheriff's department after getting lost in the mountains for 10 days.

The boys were well-prepared for the hike but were not prepared for the massive amounts of snow that followed. They were lucky to survive, suffering from hypothermia and having to huddle together for three nights to stay warm.

Yosemite National Park has had to be closed indefinitely due to the excessive snowfall.

4. La Niña, which worsens Atlantic hurricanes and Western droughts, is gone

The La Nina weather phenomenon, which increases Atlantic hurricane activity and worsens western drought, has ended after three years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's usually good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists said.

The globe is now in what's considered a "neutral" condition.

5. Where there's gender equality, people tend to live longer

Both women and men are likely to live longer when a country makes strides towards gender equality, according to a new global study that authors believe to be the first of its kind.

The study was published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health this week. It adds to a growing body of research showing that advances in women's rights benefit everyone. "Globally, greater gender equality is associated with longer [life expectancy] for both women and men and a widening of the gender gap in [life expectancy]," they conclude.

6. New data shows 1 in 7 cars sold globally is an EV, and combustion engine car sales have decreased by 25% since 2017

Electric vehicles are the key technology to decarbonise road transport, a sector that accounts for 16% of global emissions. Compared with 2020, sales nearly doubled to 6.6 million (a sales share of nearly 9%), bringing the total number of electric cars on the road to 16.5 million.

Sales were highest in China, where they tripled relative to 2020 to 3.3 million after several years of relative stagnation, and in Europe, where they increased by two-thirds year-on-year to 2.3 million. Together, China and Europe accounted for more than 85% of global electric car sales in 2021

7. Lastly, watch this touching moment as rescued puppy gains trust in her new owners

By the way, this is my newly started YouTube channel. Subscribe for more wholesome videos :D

---

That's it for this week. If you liked this post you can support this newsletter with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Let's carry the positivity into next week and keep spreading the good news!

[wherelibertydwells]

Tropical storms and hurricanes have not increased in number or strength over the 50 years we've had satellites monitoring the weather. If CO2 were increasing the number of storms we'd be able to see if there is a noticeable trend.

This shows the number of tropical storms on the top line and the hurricanes on the bottom. There's no real trend on either.

This shows the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE). Global is on top and the northern hemisphere on the bottom.

ACE estimates the total energy involved in the named storm systems for each year. We can see some years were higher, some lower but again, there's no strong trend up or down.

The media and the global warming alarmists will repeat the usual nonsense about increasing numbers and intensity of storms after Beryl does its thing. They do it after every major storm and then they go quiet after every calm period.

It's one sided reporting to alarm the public and to skew perception to make you believe the world is ending, the weather is your fault, and the only cure is more government.

Source for the charts.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Across the American South, tides are rising at accelerating rates that are among the most extreme on Earth, constituting a surge that has startled scientists such as Jeff Chanton, professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University.

“It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “You would think it would increase gradually, it would be a gradual thing. But this is like a major shift.”

Worldwide sea levels have climbed since 1900 by some 1.5 millimeters a year, a pace that is unprecedented in at least 3,000 years and generally attributable to melting ice sheets and glaciers and also the expansion of the oceans as their temperatures warm. Since the middle of the 20th century the rate has gained speed, exceeding 3 millimeters a year since 1992.

In the South the pace has quickened further, jumping from about 1.7 millimeters a year at the turn of the 20th century to at least 8.4 millimeters by 2021, according to a 2023 study published in Nature Communications based on tidal gauge records from throughout the region. In Pensacola, a beachy community on the western side of the Florida Panhandle, the rate soared to roughly 11 millimeters a year by the end of 2021. 

“I think people just really have no idea what is coming, because we have no way of visualizing that through our own personal experiences, or that of the last 250 years,” said Randall Parkinson, a coastal geologist at Florida International University. “It’s not something where you go, ‘I know what that might look like because I’ve seen that.’ Because we haven’t.

“It’s the same everywhere, from North Carolina all the way down to the Florida Keys and all the way up into Alabama,” he said. “All of these areas are extremely vulnerable.”

The acceleration is poised to amplify impacts such as hurricane storm surges, nuisance flooding and land loss. In recent years the rising tides have coincided with record-breaking hurricane seasons, pushing storm surges higher and farther inland. In 2022 Hurricane Ian, which came ashore in southwest Florida, was the costliest hurricane in state history and third-costliest to date in the United States, after Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017.

“It doesn’t even take a major storm event anymore. You just get these compounding effects,” said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director at the Union for Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “All of a sudden you have a much more impactful flooding event, and a lot of the infrastructure, frankly, like the stormwater infrastructure, it’s just not built for this.”

[mariacallous]

The term “climate haven” never made much sense. After Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of rain on western North Carolina, many major media outlets marveled at how Asheville, which had been celebrated as a climate haven, had been devastated by a climate-related disaster.

Some in the media later reported accurately that climate havens don’t actually exist. But that still raises the question: Where did this climate haven concept even come from?

Well before humans began putting billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, entire populations would migrate toward better conditions in search of a place with milder weather or more fertile soil or the absence of drought.

Because of its speed and scale, however, human-caused climate change is especially extreme, and everywhere will be impacted by some degree of risk. There is no completely safe haven.

Which is part of how we ended up talking about the idea of climate havens. It’s wishful thinking. At least that’s what several experts told me after Helene laid a path of destruction across the Southeast and as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida. As the impacts of climate change became more real and apparent, the media as well as local leaders started looking for a better story to tell.

“People are desperate for optimism,” said Jesse Keenan, director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University, who described the concept of climate havens as a fiction. “It gives people hope.”

Keenan actually blames himself for helping to popularize the term. For a concept that feels so widespread now, it’s surprisingly hard to find much mention of climate havens in the media before 2018. That was when The Guardian quoted Keenan in a piece about where you should move to save yourself from climate change that used the phrase “safe havens.” Buffalo, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota, were Keenan’s suggestions.

The concept gained more traction a few months later, when Mayor Byron W. Brown referred to Buffalo as a “climate refuge” in his 2019 state of the city address, followed by outlets like Bloomberg and Quartz referring to Buffalo as a climate haven. The New York Times did a whole spread on “climate-proof Duluth,” a slogan Keenan wrote as part of an economic development package commissioned by the city. He told me it was just a joke that got pulled out of context.

It’s hard to know how responsible one professor with a knack for marketing was for the mainstreaming of the climate haven concept. But it’s easy to see why local governments would latch onto it.

The Census Bureau estimates that as climate change warms the planet over the next several decades, 100 million will migrate into and around the US. Increased flood risk may have already pushed several million people out of coastal and low-lying areas across the US, as wildfires start to raise questions about migration in the West.

Inland cities, namely those along the Rust Belt that have been losing population for years, see an opportunity to pull those people in.

“The idea of a climate refuge itself is kind of an escapist fantasy,” said Billy Fleming, director of the McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “To the extent that a climate refuge even exists, it’s not a particularly physical or geophysical phenomenon. It’s social and economic.”

Fleming added that, for these would-be climate havens, attracting new residents is a means to pull in more tax revenue and create wealth for the community. “It’s about keeping the real estate machine churning,” he added, “which is the thing that pays for everything else in the city.”

The real estate industry has taken notice. Quite coincidentally, as Hurricane Helene was bearing down on the Southeast last week, Zillow announced a new feature that displays climate risk scores on listing pages alongside interactive maps and insurance requirements. Now, you can look up an address and see, on a scale of 1 to 10, the risk of flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires for that property, based on data provided by the climate risk modeling firm First Street. Redfin, a Zillow competitor, launched its own climate risk index using First Street data earlier this year.

The new climate risk scores on Zillow and Redfin can’t tell you with any certainty whether you’ll be affected by a natural disaster if you move into any given house. But this is a tool that can help guide decisions about how you might want to insure your property and think about its long-term value.

It’s almost fitting that Zillow and Redfin, platforms designed to help people find the perfect home, are doing the work to show that climate risk is not binary. There are no homes completely free of risk for the same reasons that there’s no such thing as a perfect climate haven.

Climate risk is a complicated equation that complicates the already difficult and complex calculus of buying a home. Better access to data about risk can help, and a bit more transparency about the insurance aspect of homeownership is especially useful, as the industry struggles to adapt to our warming world and the disasters that come with it.

“As we start to see insurance costs increase, all that starts to impact that affordability question,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s chief economist, told me. “It’ll help the housing market move towards a much healthier place, where buyers and sellers understand these risks and then have options to meet them.”

That said, knowledge of risk isn’t keeping people from moving to disaster-prone parts of the country right now. People move to new parts of the country for countless different reasons, including the area’s natural beauty, job prospects, and affordable housing. Those are a few of the reasons why high-risk counties across the country are growing faster than low-risk counties, even in the face of future climate catastrophes, which are both unpredictable and inevitable. It’s almost unfathomable to know how to prepare ourselves properly for the worst-case scenario.

“The scale of these events that we’re seeing are so beyond what humans have ever seen,” said Vivek Shandas, an urban planning professor at Portland State University. “No matter what we think might be a manageable level of preparedness and infrastructure, we’re still going to see cracks, and we’re still going to see breakages.”

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build sea walls or find new ways to fight wildfires. In a sense, we have the opportunity to create our own climate havens by making cities more resilient to the risks they face. We can be optimistic about that future.

[meret118]

Category 1 hurricanes have wind speeds of 74—95 mph, Category 2 of 96—110 mph, Category 3 of 111—129 mph, Category 4 of 130—156 mph, and Category 5 hurricanes have winds of 157 mph or higher.

A study published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory meteorologists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February this year proposed that a new Category 6 is needed for hurricanes that reach wind speeds of 192 mph or higher.

. . .

"Of the 197 [tropical cyclones] that were classified as category 5 during the 42-[year] period 1980 to 2021, which comprises the period of highest quality and most consistent data, half of them occurred in the last 17 y of the period. Five of those storms exceeded our hypothetical category 6 and all of these occurred in the last 9 y of the record," the researchers wrote in the paper.

"The most intense of these hypothetical category 6 storms, Patricia, occurred in the Eastern Pacific making landfall in Jalisco, Mexico, as a category 4 storm. The remaining category 6 storms all occurred in the Western Pacific."

Patricia—which hit in October 2015—reached wind speeds of 216 mph, while the other four western Pacific typhoons all reached 195-196 mph. The researchers note that the chance of storms potentially reaching Category 6 intensity has "more than doubled" since 1979.

Ali Sarhadi, an assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Newsweek: "There is strong agreement that the frequency and intensity of major tropical cyclones (Category 3 and above) are likely to increase as a result of climate change. This is driven by rising ocean temperatures, which provide more thermal energy to fuel tropical cyclones, and the increased capacity of a warmer atmosphere to hold moisture, leading to heavier rainfall during the landfall of these storms."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Anna Betts at The Guardian:

Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a category 5 hurricane, just two days before it is due to make landfall in Florida. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami issued the updated forecast on Monday after saying the storm had become a category 4 hurricane more quickly than initially expected.

Meanwhile, the state is gearing up for what could be its biggest evacuation in seven years as the storm heads toward population centers including Tampa and Orlando just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused more than 200 deaths and catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains. The storm cemented its major hurricane status on Monday as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 175mph (249km/h), the National Hurricane Center said. While fluctuations in intensity are expected, the National Weather Service said on Monday afternoon that Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida. Even if the storm somewhat weakens before landfall (projected for Wednesday or early Thursday), forecasters warned that levels of storm surge – Gulf waters pushed inland by the approaching hurricane – would be equivalent to the maximum category it reaches.

Milton could make landfall on Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean. On that track, it would be the 10th major hurricane – category 3 or higher – to make landfall along the US’s Gulf coast since 2017. According to a CNN Meteorologist, Milton is now the third-fastest rapidly intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic. In less than 24 hours, Milton’s wind speeds increased by 90 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center and per forecasters, only two hurricanes have strengthened more than that in 24-hour period –  Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007.

Experts attribute such a high rate of powerful, destructive storms to the climate crisis, which is spurred in part by the burning of fossil fuels. Weather officials said on Monday morning that Milton was expected to bring heavy rainfall, flooding, life-threatening storm surge and strong winds. They also said it will probably maintain its intensity for several days after reaching its peak. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Sunday that while it remained to be seen exactly where Milton would strike, it was clear the state was going to be hit hard.

Hurricane Milton has intensified to a Category 5 hurricane in quick time, as Florida is under the microscope for the worst hit.

[joy-haver]

Let’s talk a little bit about hurricanes!

Let’s discuss where the danger lies, individual preparedness, community preparedness, and mutual aid efforts around these storms and their aftermaths.

To start, the thing to remember about hurricanes is this: It’s not one disaster. It’s hundreds of different disasters at once.

Hurricanes have their own massive winds. They also spawn tornadoes. Hurricanes bring storm surges like tsunamis, but they also bring heavy rains, swelled rivers, broken dams. The vectors for flooding are multitudinous.

With any disaster, the danger isn’t always direct. While many people die die in the immediate storm, often the deaths continue to accumulate for months after. This is because people don’t just go on living just because the storm is over. All of us have lives that are dependent on infrastructure. Medical infrastructure, food infrastructure, social infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, electrical infrastructure. When any of these fails it can put strain on the rest. People go hungry, go lonely, their disabilities go untreated, injuries are more likely in the wreckage, they die of infection and disease and suicide because it seems so hopeless. So many become homeless, displaced, losing everything. And often there is nothing in the way of aid.

And bigotry can often exacerbate. white supremacist groups and police become vigilantes, killing those who scavenge the wreckage. Even in milder hurricanes, police violence and violence from store proprietors increases. Disabled people are often pushed out of hospitals to die at home. People are euthanized.

Hurricanes exacerbate the worst parts of the system of domination.

But they also bring out the best in communities and people who believe in caring for one another.

After every hurricane, tens of thousands of volunteers go out in their airboats to save people from the floods. People prepare food, develop water filtration. People open their homes to those who have fled, those who often have lost everything. These volunteer armies of aid workers are from all accross the south east, from many paths of life and from every conceivable part of the political spectrum. On the flat boats of the Cajun Navy, in their supply lines, you will see maga hats standing next to anarchist abolitionists, both concerned primarily with how they will get an old woman both just met her medicine. Months and years after the storm you will see flocks of children flittering like bees around stripped down homes, helping to remove what is tainted and rebuild towards home again, and they will be working aside those same people who helped in the immediate aftermath.

Even when government aid does come in, it is not the government that manages all of it. They pass off many of the resources the mutual aid organizations for distribution.

The environmental cleanup, the saving, the feeding, the rebuilding; the vast majority of the work is done by everyday people. That can include you.

So, What Do We Do?

1. Individual and household preparedness.

The biggest step is preparedness. A pound of cure is nice, but it is better served with an ounce of prevention.

Individual Preparedness begins with risk evaluation.

Ask yourself these questions;

-what is the likelihood of my home flooding? Has it flooded before? How much could it flood if it did? Do I have sand bags or flood walls to prevent minor floodwaters? Do I have roof access in high floodwaters?

-what is my evacuation plan? Do I have friends in a safer area (away from coasts, outside of a flood plane)? Do I have transportation to their? If not, how can I find other people that do?

-how long can I live without power? Do I have life saving medical equipment that needs power? If so, who do I know with a generator?

-how much water do I have stored? What vessels around my house can hold water? (Remember, you can always use less than drinkable water to flush toilets).

-how much non perishable food do I have stored? How would I cook it without electricity? How much cooking fuel do I have access to? How would I continue to cook and wash dishes if I had limited access to water?

-What would keep me going if I lost everything I own? What motivations to live and keep going could I hold onto?

-do I have home insurance? Do I have pictures of the things inside my house stored on the could or a third party location incase I need to make a claim?

-where are my important documents stored? Are they safe incase of a flood, or the house falling down?

-how acclimated am I to the heat? Have I been spending enough time outside? Will a loss of air conditioning make me unable to function? Do I have a plan to get cool if that happens?

2. Community preparedness

Of course, individual preparedness is not enough, nor is it the most efficient. Survival and rebuilding comes from communities working together. So how do we do that?

Let’s talk a bit about skills you can have, and skills you can look for in your community, that might come in handy in a hurricane or post hurricane disaster.

-airboat and pirogue navigation! This is how you save lives. Flat bottom boats you can get people into.

-food storage and preservation. Networking with folks who doing canning, save beans, store large amounts of rice, gather nuts, dehydrate greens and fruits. These folks will often provide much of the food before outside aid arrives, and after it dries up.

-outdoor cooking!

-water purification. This is huge. Clean water is the hardest thing to come by. Having water purification tablets and devices, or knowing how to make your own, can save hundreds of peoples lives.

-cautious eyes. Everyone needs help spotting downed power lines in these environments.

-ham radio enthusiasts. These folks can be the lifeblood of rescue operations, resource distribution, and medical assistance. This is probably the most under utilized skill in disaster response and management

-construction. This is huge. Rebuilding requires many many volunteers. The wonderful thing tho, is you can just show up and learn most of the time.

- cleaning. Mold is a huge problem post hurricane.

-first aid!!!!

-physical strength. Many frail old people need to be carried out.

-a strong sense that flood water is dangerous. This might not seem like a skill. It is. Being willing to instill this sense of fear and respect in others will save lives.

-networking. This is huuuge. Somone has to connect all the rednecks and Cajuns and gays and aid organizations and churches and restaurants and whatever else. None of this works without relationships. Knowing people, building trust ahead of time. Being the person they come to with their resources.

-grant writing. Get that government money into the community.

3. Resource evaluation

Skills to offer your community are very important, but that’s not all we have. We have access to other resources, and if we leverage those right, those too can save lives.

Community preparedness begins with resource evaluation, and needs evaluation.

Here are some resources you might have, and how you can use them.

-a safe home, high off of flood zones. You can be an evacuation destination.

-a generator. You can be the place with power that people flee to to save their medications, or to use medical equipment, or simply to keep from having a heat stroke

-a large pot and propane burner. You can be the person who cooks for masses of displaced people. Or you can let someone else use it and cook.

-flat bottom boats. You can save people, or let others use them to.

-construction equipment and supplies. You can bring these in after a disaster to help.

-access to large buildings with generators. If you are the janitor at the stadium, you can open the gates to that high ground. If you are the secretary of the church, you can unlock the doors of shelter.

-contacts with people in nearby cities who have been through this before, and have their own resources. Hurricanes are terrible, but they don’t hit the whole south at once. We can take turns saving each other

- a pool full of water people can use to flush toilets.

- storage of food.

-space others can store any items listed

-access to lots of sunscreen, insect repellents, and mosquito nets

-access to soap, detergent, toothbrushes, toothpastes, menstrual products, and deodorant. Specifically go for free and clear soaps, dial gold, and dawn. They all have different applications.

-an excess of phone chargers. Phones are lifelines. They are one of the most important things you can have.

-an excess of medicines. Rationing and saving prescriptions might save your life or others.

-first aid equipment

4. need’s assessment.

All of this is great, but to make best use of it, it’s best to know ahead of time where resources will be needed, and who might need the most help.

Begin learning this by focusing on these things.

-do you know the people who live around you? Do you know who’s old and alone, and might need to be checked on in a storm? Do you know who is disabled? Do you know who lives at the bottom of your hill by the flooding creek, and who lives at the top where it’s safest? These questions can save lives!

-do you know who might need help evacuating? If you plan to evacuate, do they know you could take them with you?

-do you know who needs access to generators for life saving equipment?

-do you know who is too poor to afford to be prepared?

-do you know who might need help putting sand bags around their home?

-do you know which mutual aid and charity organizations might need help connecting to local communities?

Thank you for reading!

Stay safe out there, and help as often as you can, while still keeping yourself stable enough to help again later. Right now many homes are flooded in Florida, power is out in Georgia, and a dam broke near Asheville.

Volunteer : https://stability.org/default.aspx

Donate : https://nonprofit.resilia.com/donate/

https://nonprofit.resilia.com/donate/

[viennasphilosophy]

The sahara desert has flooded.

The US has just had 3 cat 5 hurricaines, one of which has defied the mathematical laws of a cat 5 and is possibly a new cat 6. For the majority of hurricane Katrina, it was only a category 3. Volcanoes are erupting in Iceland. Hurricaine Kirk is hitting europe as a cat 4-5. Idaho is on fire. Our earth is dying and nobody cared until it is now becoming too late.

The fossil fuels being put into our earths O Zone layer are melting the antarctic and with the rising sea surface temperatures are fuelling the intensity of hurricanes, and the warmer atmosphere can carry more water. Major companies are killing our only earth and they do not care.

The growing frequency of climate change related disasters such as wildfires, floods, hurricanes, etc increased the chances that volcanoes will erupt.

Climate change disaster news will slowly be filmed closer and closer to you until you’re the one filming it. It is a real problem that is happening in real time.

[kawaiijohn]

Woo yay yippieeee even :(

From James spann Twitter (above imbed):

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Milton remains a catastrophic category five hurricane early this morning with winds of 160 mph. The hurricane is about 300 miles southwest of Tampa, and is moving to the northeast at 14 mph. A Storm Surge Warning is in effect for... * Florida west coast from Flamingo northward to Yankeetown, including Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay * Sebastian Inlet Florida to Altamaha Sound Georgia, including the St. Johns River A Hurricane Warning is in effect for... * Florida west coast from Bonita Beach northward to Suwannee River, including Tampa Bay * Florida east coast from the St. Lucie/Martin County Line northward to Ponte Vedra Beach From NHC Milton is moving northeastward at 12 kt in the flow between a mid-to upper-level trough over the northern Gulf and a ridge located over the Greater Antilles. This motion should generally continue until Milton makes landfall in Florida, which is likely to occur late tonight or early tomorrow morning. After the hurricane reaches the coast, a turn to the east-northeast is expected as another trough approaches the system from the west. Milton should exit Florida and move over the Atlantic waters tomorrow afternoon and accelerate eastward after that. The NHC track forecast is nudged a little to the north of the previous one to be in better agreement with the latest models. It should be noted that this forecast is based on the model fields, not the interpolated models which appear to be too far south. Users are urged not to focus on the exact landfall point as the average error at 24 hours is about 40 miles. The global models agree that vertical wind shear is expected begin to increase over Milton later today, and that should cause some weakening. However, there is high confidence that Milton will remain a very dangerous hurricane when it reaches Florida, and maintain hurricane status as it moves across the state. The cyclone is expected to become extratropical over the Atlantic on Friday and gradually weaken. The NHC intensity forecast is similar to the previous one and near the high end of the model guidance. Milton's wind field is expected to grow considerably in size while it moves across Florida. Additionally, a large region of tropical storm and hurricane-force winds could occur on the northwest/back side of the storm since Milton will be interacting with a frontal boundary and beginning extratropical transition. Damaging winds, life-threatening storm surge, and heavy rainfall will extend well outside the forecast cone. This is a very serious situation and residents in Florida should closely follow orders from their local emergency management officials. Evacuations and other preparations should be rushed to completion. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida. Key messages *A large area of destructive storm surge, with highest inundations of 10 ft or greater, is expected along a portion of the west-central coast of the Florida Peninsula. If you are in the Storm Surge Warning area, this is an extremely life-threatening situation, and you should evacuate as soon as possible if ordered by local officials. *Devastating hurricane-force winds are expected along portions of the west coast of Florida, where a Hurricane Warning is in effect. Milton is forecast to remain a hurricane while it crosses the Florida Peninsula and life-threatening hurricane-force winds, especially in gusts, are expected to spread inland across the peninsula. Preparations to protect life and property, including being ready for long-duration power outages, should be rushed to completion. *Heavy rainfall across the Florida Peninsula through tomorrow brings the risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding along with moderate to major river flooding, especially in areas where coastal and inland flooding combine to increase the overall flood threat.

Stay safe y'all.

[cherryg]

For the past months there has been a storm of bad internet bills this year, now it’s not just the EARN It Act or KOSA but now a bill just like EarnIt called STOP CSAM.

There has also been overwhelming support on KOSA with some news articles claiming that groups who once opposed KOSA supports it now.

It also now has 36 cosponsors with a group called Design it For US saying they are going to lobby for it to get more cosponsors to sign the bill in the senate in July along with pushing a markup for the bill.

This group is dedicated to protect children online which is a good thing but they also have huge misguided support for KOSA.

There are also bad pro censorship groups like NCOSE and The heritage foundation supporting this bill as well

KOSA was supposed to protect kids online but this will actually give state attorneys power to dictate what could be recommended for kids.

This is a huge issue because this will give bigots and transphobic people power to use this against lgbt and trans content censoring them entirely.

Major proof from this is that a far right group called the heritage foundation recently came out with this tweet. Last year they created an article stating why the support KOSA (KidsOnlineSafetyAct) and it’s not pretty at all.

/Warning/ if this stuff triggers you feel free to skip this part until you see a green check mark

TW: Transphobia

✅

Some groups that support KOSA claims that the state attorney stuff in the legislation has been “watered down” and that all concerns are “addressed”

but it’s kinda hard to believe when you have groups that have these kinds of dangerous and close minded views behind statements on how they are gonna use this particular bill to censor content from groups of people they hate.

Also, support was so huge that Dove is also advocating for it with Lizzo https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/tell-lizzo/

Also if you want more information and facts on why KOSA may not be a good idea. You can find more info here https://fair.org/home/these-bills-will-make-children-less-safe-

Meanwhile a few senators are trying to push the EarnIt act along with its sister bill called STOP CSAM. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/stop-csam-act-would-put-security-and-free-speech-risk

While stopping csam is a great idea, these bills are bad for privacy and increase government surveillance. It’s also a section 230 carve out and will hurt creativity and free speech and expression. It’s also dangerous for everyone in a lot of ways. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/15/lgbtq-earn-it-act-risks-online/70247956007/

Please everyone, call your senators and tell them to oppose these bad internet bills!

( I’m sorry guys if this is badly made I’m currently rushing, I will be updating this post more and adding in more information)