Crying Meteorologists

 

“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.” South Florida’s NBC 6 Meteorologist John Morales, unable to hold back his tears, October 8th. “I apologize… This is just horrific… Where the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot—record hot… You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: global warming, climate change.”

“This is literally catastrophic… And I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die.” 

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor on CNN, October 7th, as Milton approached.

Even as fabrication-master Majorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia MAGA Congressperson, suggested that “they” (Dems?) are controlling the weather from Antarctica – suggesting that man-controlled weather is possible even as she holds that man-induced climate change is a hoax (??) – her master lie-instructor, Donald Trump, falsely cried that the Biden-Harris administration was diverting funds from disaster relief to fund undocumented migrants… leaving hurricane victims with virtually nothing. Even as several Republican governors in hard hit Helene/Milton states – minus Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who would not take Biden’s call to offer Florida “whatever it needs” – praised the rapidity and level of the FEMA response. These deniers and marginalizers of climate change have managed to turn the worst set of hurricanes to hit the Southeast in a century into a political event. Can we vote out climate change? Will nature listen?

So, what are millibars and why are these measurements relevant? According to Sciencing.com, “Rotating storm systems that originate over tropical and subtropical oceans are called tropical cyclones. As a tropical cyclone gains intensity, it becomes a hurricane. Inside a hurricane, the barometric pressure at the ocean's surface drops to extremely low levels. This central low pressure draws in warm, moist ocean air, and thunderstorms swirl around the center of these massive storms.” Millibars are the measurement of mercury in a barometer, which rises and falls based on atmospheric pressure. Rapidly dropping mercury is a terrible omen.

The warmer the water temperatures (and the surface temperatures immediately above), the more a whirling storm system effectively fuels itself, carrying massive amounts of “inhaled” water, as wind speeds intensity in open water, pushing seas forward with unbelievable strength. So, you have three damaging components: powerful winds, deluge-laden rain and a massive ocean surge ready to slam into the first land mass it may encounter. The warmer the ocean water, the more intense the storm… And ocean temperatures in storm prone regions, like the Gulf of Mexico, have never been higher.

While some hurricanes burn themselves out over open ocean waters, dumping their load far from humanity, other killer storms slow only when they hit land mass. And while these storms do slow, their initial impact is often super-devastating; the heavy absorbed water they carry only keeps them over land longer, dumping massive rain, whipped up by the accompanying wind. Aside from the walls of seawater (often higher than a house) ocean surges and the humungous rain, the wind rips roofs off homes, turning debris in its path into lethal projectiles. The entire coastline of Florida is being reconfigured as these hurricanes carve away coastal sand and hammer bays and inlets. According to scientists, this pattern of horrific hurricanes in this region will accelerate the impact of rising oceans… and in the foreseeable future, wash away the Florida Keys, the North Carolina Outer Banks… ultimately sending as much as 30% of Florida underwater.

Look carefully at the pre-Milton-landfall NASA image above. There are three hurricanes in that photograph, the first triple such hurricane slam since 1851. This picture alone should tell humanity that the world of hurricanes (“cyclones” in the Asia Pacific region) has steadily and massively increased, both as to major storm frequency and intensity. As wildfires rage in the West, flooding storms and tornados intensify in the Midwest, the single most devasting impact on the United States, the one that will wreak the most economic devastation, death and health crisis in the trillions and trillions of dollars-worth (without even trying to put a dollar value on life) is unambiguously climate change. Further, searing heat and migrating disease-laden insects are the sustained killers that do not require a natural disaster to kill humans and animals alike.

As Kamala Harris is rapidly rising against Donald Trump in his once “strong suit” (the economy), Trump is forced to emphasize other issues, primarily immigration at our southern border, to push back. Only a baldfaced lie could tie immigration to federal disaster relief, but that is clearly within Trump’s standard playbook. That he can campaign in recently hurricane-devasted regions, with a promise to gut Biden’s massive infrastructure bill with a heavy emphasis on containing climate change, alone should be enough to tell voters that the United States cannot afford to reelect Trump. You will notice that I did not use any statistics or photos of the actual damage from hurricanes Helene and Milton… I am sure that you have been and will continue to be deluged with those images and reports in ample numbers from any news source you choose.

I’m Peter Dekom, and electing climate change marginalizers and deniers to high office is akin to implementing a slow suicide for many… and a very immediate suicide for others.