politics

I used to rhetorically say for years that our global oligarchs won't let us steer away from reckless economic growth/metastasis until CAT 6 hurricanes, because they'll need a new level of intensity, are flattening entire cities.

I've grown wiser since then. Literally nothing will stop our global oligarchs from running up their ego competition scores at humanity's expense until civilization truly, completely, entirely collapses, not even from cities being flattened from a single superstorm.

Our species is determined and committed to destroying itself and its only habitat for short term private profit for a few thousand sociopath families. We're a dog with a bone.

I think it should go to 11

Not sure this counts as "Politics". It's more "News" or "Science" until Trump picks up a sharpie pen again. ;)

Leaving it for now, might remove later.

Some native Floridians now dismiss a Cat 4 as not as big deal as a Cat 5, not realizing the very small wind level difference. Adding a 6 would let them downplay a 5. My own stance is that once things start getting picked up by moving air, it's all dangerous and should be prepared for and avoided.

Plus, most deaths in a hurricane aren't from the wind. They're from drowning from flood waters. There's plenty of eyewitness videos now on the internet for anyone to be aware of the seconds it takes to go from safe to shit, but people will always think it only happens to other people.

Why not just increase the levels for 1-5 to rerate them so that 5 is a little stronger?

Because these go up to 6...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc

I don’t think adding a category 6 would change anything. I live in New Orleans and the point of the categories is to let the public know the risk and what to do. There’s really not much difference between a direct hit from a category 4 and a 5 now. A category 1 means hunker down. Category 2 means vulnerable areas need to evacuate. Category 3+ (usually) means mandatory evacuation. Category 4 and 5 typically just mean expect the worst.

I’d really rather we replace the Saffir-Simpson scale with something that takes things beyond wind into consideration. Look at Katrina. It was a category 5 at sea (so cat 5 storm surge) but was category 3 at landfall. But it also was organized and covered like half the Gulf of Mexico.

Other storms can be very compact and fast moving and yeah, wind damage is bad but there’s way more to a hurricane than wind. Harvey sat over Houston for days and caused insane flooding.

I mean... when the heat dome happened and it was 115°f in the PNW, they had to invent colors because the current spectrum showing temp wasn't enough. The hot areas were magenta and grey.

Also, anyone else keep thinking of the kaiju classifications in Pacific Rim with the class 5 that appears?

I think we should just call them Fuck-You-i-canes. FUricanes for short.

Afaik the hurricane categories go up to 10, but the category stops mattering after a certain level because there's no construction standards that can withstand the winds once hurricanes are on that level or above.

Stories like this remind me of what my husband says about global warming: The world is not being trashed, it's just being rearranged in a way that is not conducive to life.

This is interesting, but it is not politics.