Thursday, September 29: Warmer Water Makes Stronger Storms
Don't be the person riding a jet ski during a hurricane
Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida yesterday, much to the amusement of some Florida men. Videos show the level of devastating damage to homes, roads, and businesses in the area, as the hurricane rampaged through the state like an unwelcome dinner guest intent on exploring every corner of your house. Fortunately, the storm has lost some of its strength as it travels over land. Unfortunately, the land it traveled over was home to hundreds of thousands of people.
At present there are millions of Floridians without power, as the rain continues to fall and the wind persists in whipping. Some local hospitals are considering evacuating their patients, as they’ve lost access to clean water. State officials warned that Ian could go down as one of the worsts storms to ever hit the state as authorities in cities like Naples say more than half of the streets are no longer passable due to either flooding or debris blocking the road. Of course we can’t talk about storms without talking about climate change!
“As human beings increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the atmosphere and the oceans both warm. That leads to more fuel available for hurricanes.”
-Daniel Gilford, meteorologist at Climate Central & hurricane whisperer
Bearing this in mind, the Nordstream pipeline leak/attack I mentioned yesterday is estimated to be the largest release of methane in human history. Larger even than the time I ate nothing but lentils on a camping trip. Our collective ability to ignore the connection between two major global events playing out side by side (in this case, the pipeline leak and the devastating hurricane) never ceases to amaze me.
Side Items
No More Hunger?: Yesterday Biden announced a plan to end hunger in the US by 2030…yikes. It’s like this guy wakes up every day, throws random darts at a dart board with buzzwords and initiatives on it and announces that as his new campaign promise. “We’ll get rid of cancer”, “we’ll get rid of hunger”, “we’ll get rid of traffic”, honestly, these are the ramblings of a senile old man, not actual legislative announcements
RIP Coolio: He may be remembered best for Gangsta’s Paradise, but if my memory serves, the first rap song I was ever made aware of was by Coolio. It was probably 1997 or 1998 and I overheard Fantastic Voyage blasting on someone’s stereo and thought it sounded like such a fun track. After all, what kinda idiot wouldn’t wanna go on a fantastic voyage?
Another School Shooting: This time in Oakland, resulting in six people injured. There have been more than 130 school shootings in this country in 2022. If I ever make the decision to abandon this country for another one, school shootings are in the top five list of reasons why
Brazilian Elections: Brazil will hold presidential elections this Sunday, pitting their current idiotic dictator Jair Bolsonaro against his 76-year old predecessor Lula da Silva. Da Silva is making a historic comeback after spending a year and a half in jail on corrupt corruption charges (Brazil is truly unique). Personally I’ll take the geriatric over the autocrat