A category 6 gift from Donald Trump
It could even happen this year, a hurricane making landfall at category 6 strength. Thus far no Atlantic storm has yet to reach the 308 kph (192 mph) potential threshold. But as the world’s oceans continue to warm, the environment for such “perfect storms” grows more and more accommodating to such disasters.
One way to imagine such winds is to think what it would be like to be strapped to the fender of a formula 1 race car. Only it wouldn’t just be wind coming at you, it would be dirt, rocks, trees and pieces of buildings. An unsheltered human being would be dead in seconds. The destructive power of such a wind is terrible to conceive.
Technically, five such storms have already hit the category 6, 192 mph threshold. They didn’t qualify as category 6 only because their average wind speeds fell well below that number, and they never made landfall at anywhere near that strength. But it’s significant that all five of those storms have occurred since 2013, and their recent vintage and rising number point inescapably to anthropogenic climate change.
Only four category 5 hurricanes have made landfall at strength in the United States, and three of them have happened in the last 55 years. That will change as ocean temperatures continue to rise, and what was once thought of as rare “superstorms” will become more and more commonplace.
Is there a theoretical cap to such winds? Possibly. But climate scientists concede that hurricanes reaching category 8 are possible in many of our lifetimes. Beyond that no one knows for sure. The destructive power of such winds would be unlike anything ever seen.
In the past, storms of such destructive power have stood alone. But other problems caused by climate change, including drought, forest fires, poverty, forced migration, rising sea levels, and so on, mean as the number and power of such storms increase, our consequent vulnerability and inability to cope with them will increase as well.
Among his many evil doings, Donald Trump has made sure that climate science denialism is, more than ever, baked into the Republican Party’s mindset. It’s Trump’s opinion that climate change is a hoax. The problem is that Trump’s opinions have a nasty tendency to become gospel among MAGA lunatics.
So you can add superstorms to the list of horrible consequences of Republicans in power. It’s small comfort that Mar-a-Lago is especially vulnerable to such storms. Besides, it’s Donald Trump we need to punish, not the buildings and environments he occupies. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.