The death toll from Hurricane Helene has risen to 200 as rescuers continue to search for survivors from the storm that tore across the US south-east.
More than half of the deaths were in North Carolina, where entire communities were uprooted and devastated by the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005.
Hundreds of people are still missing and nearly a million homes are without power nearly a week after Helene made landfall.
I swear this is something people are missing with climate change. Yeah, 1.5 degree warming of the land, water and air isn’t alot… until you realize how much energy that takes at a regional or global scale…
And that is added to every natural disaster.
There is just no way to communicate these numbers effectively to the masses 😕
The minute you mention 1.5 degrees people turn their brain off, as “that can’t possibly be a problem”
You have to spend like 2 weeks explaining weather, climate and history before somone is educated enough to understand the problem.
Meanwhile bad actors can just say it was cold today in August! Where’s your global warming??
And all your work is undone in 2 seconds…
It’s fucking frustrating
I really like the way Katharine Hayhoe communicates this…
She explains how normal temperature fluctuations in the climate system are actually pretty similar, scaled down, to temperature fluctuations in your body throughout the day. You don’t typically worry if your body gets slightly warmer than average, but if it’s a a couple of degrees, suddenly you’re wanting to see the doctor, wondering who coughed on you, staying home from work, etc
When a country goes to war, they don’t explain all the detailled reasoning and causes to the masses either.
They just say “We’re at war, everything is at stake, this is what you have to do…”
Maybe that would be an alternative approach?
Maybe we should report this as some “the global warming till now is equivalent to throwing x atom bombs in our frickin atmosphere” and people may start realizing.
How many more are predicted this season? I thought I read they feel it’s probable at least another hurricane will hit the US this season. Isn’t that why FEMA is freaking out because they don’t have the money/resources to handle another?
There’s been a 40% chance of another storm right in the gulf for the last week. It’s possible that the same devastated area gets hit again before they’ve even had a chance to figure out what happened last week.
Here’s the thing: I think the Republicans are going to try to human sacrifice in Florida for votes.
They’re already spinning the FEMA funding issue as being because FEMA “spent all their money on immigrants,” and another devastating hurricane where FEMA can’t help as effectively would allow them to run with the idea they’re already currently (ineffectively) trying to push, which is that FEMA isn’t helping.
They’re already saying they won’t vote for additional FEMA funding due to the bullshit “immigrants” thing. So they’re going to try to flat-foot FEMA, hope for a horrifying national disaster, blame FEMA for letting people die while spending money on immigrants, and then attempt to pin it on (Biden) Harris.
They’re trying to position themselves so they can let people die in order to win an election. And it’s very possible it will work.
Most of these places are so devastated that there is no infrastructure left to allow voting to happen with. Many of the hit places are republican strongholds. Withholding funding will only hurt Republicans.
So let them try this, it’s their own asses on the line
It’s absolutely wild that the brunt of the impact was clear on the opposite end of the state from the coast.
It would be great if more people could look at this as “there but for the grace of God go I” and less as an opportunity to take a fat fucking dump on the unburied corpses of people they know nothing about.
You’re the one in here trying to turn this into a bashing Dems post. You have all this opportunity to focus solely on the victims, and you don’t. It makes what you’re actually doing quite obvious and pretty gross.
I hope to shit people aren’t dunking on the victims - it fucking sucks.
Most people with an axe to grind on this story that I’ve seen are pissed off about constant climate change denial from GOP politicians and how much worse it’s making this situation… or about fucking clowns like Matt Gaetz who voted against continued FEMA funding less than 48 hours before landfall.
I’m quite sad people lost their lives due to a storm that our shitty fucking politics absolutely made more deadly than it had to be - its the same with antivax shit… those fucking clowns in the GOP directly killed hundreds of thousands by making masks and vaccines political.
Literally had someone tell me they loved (exact words) seeing towns in Tennessee flooded out response to my recent microblog memes post 🙃 I also can’t tell you how many snide ass Dems I see saying that they brought it on themselves by living in a red state, like there aren’t people voting Dem there anyway, or like voting Dem is a magic ward to stop climate disaster from affecting you.
