The danger mentioned is realistic and should be taken seriously. However, for those who dont live in a hurricane danger zone (I'm in Florida), these doomsday articles are a normal, everyday thing. Every single year since I was 12 and paid attention/tracked hurricanes (that's 21 years ago), "Experts predict ~3 major hurricanes will make landfall this year..." killing everyone, washing away Florida, flattening civilization, ending life as we know it, yadda yadda. This is the Weather Channel as well.<p>It gets old.<p>What's sad, the 2 or 3 honest concerned studies are drowned out by the millions of fear mongering, wolf criers. Do I think this article is honest? Other than the unneeded slow burn beginning, yea. But at the same time, hurricane zones have different building codes. This isn't as big of a "surprise" problem as people imagine. No one is really surprised that anything is "vulnerable" on the gulf coast. The American Chernobyl is just clickbait.
Chernobyl is like terrorism - pretty much everything is more damaging if a risk adjusted data-driven comparison is done.<p>It is hard to describe a major disaster that is less damaging then Chernobyl. There are train wrecks that are comparable to Chernobyl by deaths [0]. On that note; wow, what a horrific rain wreck that must have been.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disaster...</a>
In the meantime, tropical storm Laura is both possibly becoming a major hurricane and potentially making land fall near Houston:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@/data=!4m4!15m3!1m1!1s%2Fg%2F11hjjy3f_b!2e1?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@/data=!4m4!15m3!1m1!1s%2Fg%2F11...</a>
On the subject of the release of dioxins, it's worth considering what happened at Seveso:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster</a>
And in 34 years we will get social media videographer gig workers releasing "Illegal cross country trip into the Galveston zone" VR experiences.<p>This reminded me of the Arkema Inc. Chemical Plant Fire. <a href="https://www.csb.gov/arkema-inc-chemical-plant-fire-/" rel="nofollow">https://www.csb.gov/arkema-inc-chemical-plant-fire-/</a><p>I wonder if it is still not required by federal regulations to analyze the risk of flooding creating process safety hazards.
As an older person, I remember similar articles written about the dangers of such a hurricane hitting New Orleans and the disaster that would result due to the vulnerable levy system. Like this piece, those articles were lightly regarded and ignored. Unfortunately its not a matter of if, but when.
Just looking at the numbers, the damage from Harvey (which they call small/lucky) was something like 6x the cost of the cheaper "artificial island" option proposed.<p>The arguments for UBI have the implication that we have too many people with not enough to do, but that's not the case. We could employ the globe 1000x over in activities for the betterment of humanity, but the system for allocating non-profit-driven work is reliably corrupted by profit-driven enterprises.
Texas tea is a mainstay of the economy so it’s not terribly surprising that a member of the southern ivies has some groups and alumni decrying oil refinery waste as a big issue. While reading the article try not to judge the people or political structures involved since a huge chunk of the population is tied to the price of oil. It’s a fool’s errand to try to convince everyday people of the dangers involved with an industry which pays their bills.
Less of a pollution issue, but a major earthquake hitting St. Louis would be absolutely devastating. I’ve seen estimates saying it would be the biggest natural disaster in US history.<p><a href="https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article223049475.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article223...</a>
Hurricane Ike, a category 4 hurricane, made landfall on the eastern end of Galveston Island in 2008.<p>Wikipedia has an article detailing the damages, including a mention of chemical pollution:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike</a>
There is a widespread belief that hurricanes and tropical cyclonic storms in general have increased in frequency and strength. This is a justified concern due to the existence of global warming and the potential loss of life and property damage generated by these immense storms.<p>I'm not a climate scientist, but I have read about climate change and hurricanes (and cyclones):<p>* In 1886 there were 7 major hurricanes that year, four hit Texas and three that hit florida. (See the hurricane tracking map for that year[1].) This was the most active year on record for hurricanes in the US, see[8].<p>* Barack Obama had the best record for hurricanes, only four hurricanes over eight years. Taft (1909-1913) had 13 in just four years over five times the rate that Obama had. Bush had 18, and Trump has had 7. The numbers are all over the place.[2]<p>* Claims that increasing ocean surface temperature will clearly generate more intense hurricane activity need to be tempered by an understanding of the energy source that drives hurricanes. It is not temperature; it is the temperature delta between the surface temperature and the overlying air that provides the energy for hurricanes, see [3], and the troposhere is warming faster than the surface according to climate scientists [4]. Wouldn't this mean that there should be less powerful and or less frequent hurricanes.<p>* Global climate-related deaths have dropped <i>dramatically</i> over the last century according to data from Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [5] and cited with a figure on p. 74 of [6].<p>* The IPCC 5 Summary Volume Final report technical summary (TFE.9, Table 1 on page 110) has this to say concerning the statement: "Increases in intense tropical cyclone activity". "Low confidence" that changes occured (since 1950), "Low confidence" of a human contribution to observed changes, and "Low confidence" of further changes in early 21st century. See p. 110 [7].<p>The IPCC, in general, has <i>low confidence</i> that climate change is currently responsible for changes in hurricane intensity.<p>* We can't rely on our own personal experience for understanding hurricane frequency, obviously.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-1886.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-1886.png</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/26/us-hurricanes-by-president-since-1900-trump-tops-obama-but-bush-beats-them-both/#74647be821d0" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/26/us-hurri...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/05/06/troposphere-warming-faster-than-earths-surface-new-measurement-shows/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/05/06/troposphere-warmi...</a><p>[5] <a href="https://www.emdat.be" rel="nofollow">https://www.emdat.be</a><p>[6] Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm, Basic Books, NY, 2020.<p>[7] <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WG1AR5_SummaryVolume_FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WG1AR5_Summa...</a><p>[8] <a href="https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-cyclone-landfalls-updated-1970-2018/" rel="nofollow">https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-cyclone...</a>
One would think Deepwater Horizon would be mentioned by comparison.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill</a>
If you're interested in sane weather reporting on Houston you can do no better than Space City Weather <a href="https://spacecityweather.com/" rel="nofollow">https://spacecityweather.com/</a><p>Also of use, the Space City Weather Flood Scale, now widely in use.
<a href="https://spacecityweather.com/the-space-city-weather-flood-scale/" rel="nofollow">https://spacecityweather.com/the-space-city-weather-flood-sc...</a>
Chernobyl is already a tiny disaster compared to the covid19 handling.<p>Hell, Puerto Rico's being devastated by Hurricane Maria already qualifies as an event that has caused more preventable destruction than Chernobyl did. You don't have to use your imagination.
Did @onetimemanytime find this article to submit after reading<p>The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266056" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266056</a><p>Because I did.
> A detailed inventory of hazardous chemicals around the Ship Channel remains difficult to come by, thanks to a Texas law that restricts public disclosure of information that could be utilized by terrorists.<p>Am I the only one who has to immediately think of the Beirut explosion disaster when reading this?!<p>> At an estimated cost of $5 billion to $7 billion, the project would be far cheaper than either the Ike Dike or the cost of recovering from an epic natural disaster.<p>And here we have the classic game of political incentives: whoever sponsors it now will be out a couple billion dollars even if the specified event never hits, so as there is no incentive for preventative work, why should it be done?
And thanks to the inaccurate and sensationalized depiction of radiation poisoning/exposure by TV shows like HBOs Chernobyl people will be in additional panic causing more harm.
This article is major clickbait hand-wavey garbage. There’s so many exaggerations and half truths I don’t know where to start. Peter Holly has been in Houston long enough to know he could have called the guys who designed those storage vessels and other refinery equipment (they’re likely neighbors) and get a quote about the tolerances they were designed for. He could have included a map showing the placement of the various container ports (there’s more than one, this isn’t Long Beach) and refineries or storage. This information is all easily obtained in Houston.<p>Every time something happens here with a hurricane people here and across the country see fit to write inflammatory articles that are pure bullshit.<p>Is there some risk of a LOPC (loss of primary containment) somewhere near the coast? Yes. How big? Which facilities? What category storm? What storm track? Would it be like Chernobyl? No.