Ghosts of vacations past. What do these all have in common?
Beach, Sanibel Island, Florida.
Boats in a Punta Gorda, Florida marina.
Shopping area, Sarasota, Florida.
Bayshore Boulevard, Tampa, Florida. I don't think this is the place where the now viral photo of water sucked out of Tampa Bay was taken but it gives you a good view of the bay.
Tampa, taken from Bayshore Boulevard.
Historic home, Savannah, Georgia.
Ravenel Bridge at sunset, looking at Charleston, South Carolina.
College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina.
Sanibel. Punta Gorda. Sarasota. Savannah. Charleston.
What do they have in common? The photos were taken between 2013 and 2020, before Hurricane Ian (or tropical storm Ian) hit. Perhaps we should call it "the before time". True, these cities have been hit by hurricanes and tropical storms before. But Ian was what some are calling a "generational storm".
Of these localities, perhaps Sanibel/Captiva Island was hit the worst. The island is cut off except by air or water, and its residents are lacking power and water. I spent part of yesterday looking at satellite images of Sanibel, trying to see landmarks I remembered from my two visits there.
But let's not mourn what was.
Let's not waste another moment without working on what is.
The storms are getting worse. More frequent.
How many more "I've never seen anything like this before?" must we hear before we wake up to what is happening?
Climate change isn't a political position to take. This isn't a political post.
Climate change It is reality. We ignore it at our peril, and the peril of our children and grandchildren.
Climate action is important. Your photos are beautiful.
ReplyDelete...go to higher ground!
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of ants getting flooded, then returning and rebuilding just to get flooded again. Only, humans should be smarter. Beautiful locations, everyone wants to live there even with the risks, which are becoming more common. I got angry at some You Tubers (and other "influencers") who purposely went to Florida for "content." One was laughing in the stores about the lack of water, and no bread, and how they couldn't have their tacos without tortillas. All the while they were staying in hotel (which I will assume had water and room service), taking rooms and supplies from actual evacuees. They even ordered cases of water, for themselves, from Amazon and got it delivered. I told my son I wasn't going to watch them any more.
ReplyDeleteClueless disaster tourists ought to know: if you're going to look at other people's distress, at least go bearing gifts. I knew someone who wanted to be an eyewitness after Hurricane Katrina, so he rented a big truck and asked people to help pack it with canned goods, water, cleaning supplies, socks and so on.
DeleteYou are right. The storms keep on getting getting worse and worse.
ReplyDeleteMy former in laws lived in southwest Florida for years. It’s hard to see the devastation in that region.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen the Nova episode called Saving Venice, watch for it in the future. If something isn't done, Venice could be gone in 50 years. We are destroying our planet through ignorance of facts.
ReplyDeleteIf the lesson hasn't been learned by now, I think it is unlikely that it will be.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that the people with the power to do something are being paid to not do anything. If only we could make doing nothing unprofitable, then things would finally start changing.
ReplyDeleteOh Congress have been very busy, haggling about how much pork they can pack into an appropriations bill. Florida's Reps actually voted against one particularly porky version. They'll get federal funding, though. Only question is when.
DeleteFallacy: If you measure the badness of huricanes by the property damage, it keeps going higher because more people keep building more overpriced beach houses. If you measure by things that are accurately comparable, wind velocity, wave height, distance of damage inland, we-as-a-nation had some monster hurricanes in the nineteenth century. Saw a list somewhere once; forget whether even Katrina made it into the top ten.
ReplyDeleteThis *does not* prove that climate's not changing or that humans aren't driving the change. In fact it's easy to prove that humans are changing *local* climates in ways that are killing vulnerable fellow humans! D.C. and L.A. always were hot, but nothing like so hot as they've become. But that's not what's making hurricanes look as if every year they were worse than the year before.