With autumn turning the blazing trees bare, the Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer, and Christmas decorations on the supermarket shelves, it’s time to settle back by the hearth and discuss the ongoing hurricane season. Hurricane Iota is now destabilizing Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua in ways Oliver North only dreamt.
Hurricane Iota – think about it – more than an ecological aberration, it’s an Orwellian oxymoron.
Anthropogenic climate change is now understood by most everyone save those political leaders who would have told Superman’s father Krypton was going to be just fine. One of them deserves special mention -- Oregon State Senator Fred Girod, a climate denier who once walked off the State Senate floor to deny the quorum needed to pass carbon cap-and-trade legislation. During the current spate – or is it a pandemic -- of wildfires, he returned home to find his treasured, woodland “forever home” burned to the ground. In an exemplary burst of consistency, he blamed the dispossessing conflagration not on climate change, but on the forests, which he noted are full of wood just lyin’ on the forest floor, itchin’ to burn. It’s as if the rising ocean swept through the gates at Mar-A-Lago, strolling the grounds and frequenting the ballrooms like a dues-paying guest, but ownership (didn’t say his name!) then blamed the ocean, which is “full of water.”
At least the Girod fire story offers the pleasure of schadenfreude. A more gripping sign of the planet’s descent into incontinence is the increase in the number of tropical storms – 30 this year, a record that will stand as long as Bonds’ 73 home runs, although both outcomes can be considered juiced. As even small children understand, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and a warmer ocean supplies it, giving rise to larger and more powerful storms, as well as wash that doesn’t dry as quickly and a pandemic – or is it a spate? -- of frizzy hair.
The best indicator of the severity of this problem is that NOAA, the government’s official presence for matters of climate and weather, reached the end of its annual alphabetical list of names for this year’s Atlantic storms two months ago To be fair, the list is actually 21, not 26, names long – Q, U, X, Y, and Z are omitted, in deference to people named Queenie or Xavier, who have suffered enough. NOAA’s response was to call up the Greek alphabet, but only the first eight letters -- that’s up to theta, for you English majors. This was an optimistic limit, since it took place on September 17, and the number of storms that occur in mid-October over the last century has been greater than that in mid-August. Predictably, Iota is the ninth letter. Fortunately, the Greek alphabet offers depth – it has 15 characters left.
But Greek letters are cold and impersonal, better applied to statistical measurements and radiation than real world catastrophes. Moreover, they are ill-suited to their primary purpose – to personify their devastation they cause. Katrina forced thousands into the Superdome where, according to one presidential parent, they had it better than they did in their own homes. Sandy was so consequential that a grateful Governor Christie kind-of-hugged President Obama, which kind-of-led to the end of his Presidential run and the beginning of his successful new career as a sap. But there’s no dignity in saying your basement was flooded by Hurricane Omicron, or that the steeple of your church was blown over by tropical storm Nu. And Hurricane Omega sounds like a movie starring The Rock.
Aren’t there better alternatives? The first to describe the post-alphabet terrain is, of course, Dr. Seuss, in his visionary classic, On Beyond Zebra. In that opus, a boy named Conrad Cornelius O’Donald O’Dell becomes the linguistic Edmund Hillary (or, perhaps, Tenzing Norgay), the first to summit the letters beyond ‘z,” such as Yuzz, Wum, Um, and Quan. Hurricane Yuzz? Too onomatopoeic.
But then what? The Hebrew alphabet comes to mind, but it has problems. For example, a “b” (“Bet,” sometimes “Bait” or “Beth”) could be a “b” or a “v” and a “p” a “p” or an “f” depending on whether it has a dot, what word it’s in, and the day of the week. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet also comes to mind, but its first eight letters ---a, be, ve, ge, de, je, jo, and ze – are lousy names for storms, although that could just be disinformation.
There is a better alternative available to NOAA – using the common names of pet dogs. First and foremost, it can be done. An initial take might include; Astro, Buck (a nod to Jack London), Casey, Duke, Eddie, Fala, Ginger, Hunter, Itsy, Jinx, Killer, Lady, Milo, Nero, Otis, Pepper, Rex, Sam, Tramp, and Winnie. Following NOAA, the list elides Q, U, X, Y, and Z – Queenie can only take so much, although Victor, a malamute puppy who lives down the street, took umbrage at the omission. And it’s not the first tragedy to befall (Old) Yeller.
Sure, Hurricane Fido lacks a certain gravitas, but…compared to what? This year saw Hurricane Isaias, the Iberian version of the name Isaiah. Granted, there are (some) real people named Isaias – Isaias of Constantinople ruled that distant outpost in the fourteenth century, and Isaias Afwerki is the President of Eritrea, a more consequential post than the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana or Wasilla, Alaska. But when you say “My home was destroyed by Hurricane Fido,” your respondent can say, “That’s a bitch!,” although they might wonder if you were talking about a hurricane or a pet with distemper.
Hurricane dog names would take headline writers and TV weathermen everywhere to new heights of bad taste. “Rex Pees on Gulf,” “Bowser Rolls Over the Outer Banks,” or “FEMA Cleans Up Pepper’s Mess” would be inevitable, even if in questionable taste. If nothing else, it breathes new life into the enduring “Dog Bites Man.”
Now, you could argue people sometimes die or lose everything in hurricanes, making hurricanes dog pet names shockingly inappropriate. Granted. But, consider. There are legions of Fred Girods out there who see climate change either as part of earth’s natural “cycles,” the work of a benevolent God, or an outright hoax, and dog names offend you? It’s a bad moment for the planet, but a worse one for satire.
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