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
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?
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
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.
