It’s my understanding that “category 5” means “total destruction”, which is why this hasn’t been done in the past. However if it helps to get the point across about climate change, it would be helpful for marketing purposes.

That's not what the proposed change is about. (It's about replacing the scale with a different one that takes into account flooding and other dangers that better reflect the likelihood of fatalities than just wind speed alone. Category 1 hurricanes can sometimes be more dangerous than higher-category hurricanes under the current scale.) I worry that people might not take this seriously because they assume this is a frivolous rebranding to "market" climate change.

I think you’re referencing the tornado EF scale, not the hurricane Saffir-Simpson scale.

Hurricane categories just mean that winds are above a certain threshold. For cat 5 I think it’s 157mph, and that means if the hurricane has winds of eg 170mph it’s still a category 5.

Another problem with this system is that some category 2 or even 1 hurricanes can cause incredible devastation, depending on where they hit. But people see category 1 and they assume it’ll be nothing.

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Sorry but that reason for a change feels very coercive. If cat 5 is intended to be total destruction, meaning that anything above the lower bounds for a cat 5 is indistinguishable, there should be no 6.