Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Hurricane Melissa is the most devastating storm to hit Jamaica in recorded history, CNN reports. It rapidly intensified over the past few days, with its winds reaching 185 miles per hour at the time of landfall. This intensification is a feature of hot water, and the Caribbean in that area is hot, at about 86.1º F./ 30.1º C., much higher than it would have been 50 years ago.
Hot water also puts more moisture into the atmosphere, which the storm dumps when it makes landfall, causing massive flooding. Jamaican reporters trying to cover the maelstrom reported being unable to get to affected areas because the roads are flooded.
Only three other such Atlantic storms have reached 185 m/h, and only one has exceeded it. This is the first such monster to sweep into Jamaica. Of course, it is hardly the island’s first big hurricane. Cat 4 Beryl hit last July. But this one was a Godzilla, a Category 5.
President Donald Trump calls climate change a “hoax,” and 51% of Americans still say in polling that climate change is not a serious threat. The slightly good news is that Gallup reports that an unprecedented 48% of Americans now say that global warming will pose a serious threat to their way of life sometime in their life times, up from 44% last year. The reason that everybody doesn’t say this (since it is manifestly true) is that a vast apparatus of propaganda by Big Oil, the Republican Party (there, I’ve repeated myself) and Saudi Arabia and Russia floods the airwaves and social media constantly. Even news outlets that don’t deny our climate breakdown seldom make the connection between people-caused climate change and the billion-dollar natural disasters that increasingly strike us annually.
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Oneal Robinson of St. Elizabeth Parish said the houses were full of water, according to the Jamaica Star: “Beryl was terrible, but this is about three times worse than Beryl. I have never experienced anything like this. Melissa is giving St Elizabeth a flogging. Some persons have lost their roofs here in Mountainside, and I know Treasure Beach is also getting a beating.”
Indeed, in many parishes all the buildings lost their roofs.
Hurricane Melissa Devastates Westmoreland | TVJ News
Hurricane Melissa Devastates Westmoreland | TVJ News
Beryl knocked out electricity for weeks, and Melissa will, too. Already, 77% of Jamaica Public Service customers are without electricity, some 530,000 people.
Half of the utility poles that hold up electrical wires in Westmoreland were knocked down by the winds.
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The Jamaica Star says that fierce winds ripped off roofs, send debris hurtling through the air, and caused significant damage to four big hospitals. When a natural disaster hits, you need hospitals, but what if it hits them, too? The Black River Hospital was completely destroyed.
Total Devastation: Government Assess Impact of Hurricane Melissa in St. Elizabeth | TVJ New
Total Devastation: Government Assess Impact of Hurricane Melissa in St. Elizabeth | TVJ News
Eminent climate scientist Michael E. Man points out that burning coal, fossil gas, and petroleum heated up the water, which then increased the peak wind speed by 10% above what it would otherwise have been. That is, without people-caused climate breakdown, the winds instead would have been about 168 miles per hour.
Here’s the trick. The destructive potential of an increase in wind speeds is exponential, not serial. It doesn’t go 1, 2, 3, 4. It jumps. So 185 m/h winds are fully 33% more destructive than than 168 m/h winds are.
Why were this hurricane’s wind speeds so high? Because hot water generates hurricanes, and the hotter it is, the more powerful the storm it generates. People, by burning fossil fuels, have added added 1º C. (1.8º F.) to the temperature of the oceans since about 1750 before the Industrial Revolution.
The more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the more we heat up the planet, and the fiercer we make the hurricanes and cyclones. The hurricanes’ intensity has necessitated the creation of a new Category 6 storm because the old scale is inadequate to our climate breakdown reality.
Michael E. Mann and his colleague Peter Hotez have explained the climate change denial scam, its origins, and its threat to humanity in their book,
Science under Siege (Public Affairs, 2025). Click here to buy.
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