• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Crazy how we have a $1.4T national defense budget and yet we remain powerless in the face of some wind and rain.

    Beginning to wonder if the budgets for the F-35A/B/C/D/I, the Virginia Class submarines, and STAR WARS anti-ICBM space laser systems might have been misspent relative to the need for sea walls, dykes, and storm bunkers.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Wind and rain that we knew a century ago how to prevent. The greenhouse effect was discovered during the French Revolution. Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change has been known for about 50 years now.

      The thing is handling wind and rain sounds easy until you understand it as force carried through the media of air and water. As a midwesterner I know not to underestimate wind, it can destroy your home without slowing down. This is a bombing campaign of force in a different form.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        12 minutes ago

        Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change

        I prefer anthropogenic runaway global heating (ARGH). “Climate change” is a pretty weak formulation of the underlying problem, even weaker than “global warming”.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        The thing is handling wind and rain sounds easy until you understand it as force carried through the media of air and water.

        But we do have industrial scale infrastructure to curb the effect of these storm surges. We have construction techniques to make buildings more durable. We have artificial breakwaters and coastal preserves to blunt the landfall of these big storms. We have mass transit infrastructure technology to evacuate people quickly and efficiently, rather than stranding them in giant traffic jams in the middle of a storm.

        This is a bombing campaign of force in a different form.

        We’ve known how to build bunkers for over a century. Perhaps we need a modern day Enver Hoxha in the Florida governor’s seat.