Very_Bad_Man
Evil Genius Incognito
- Joined
- May 15, 2011
- Posts
- 7,348
C&P
Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined. It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves, said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes. Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.
Climate scientists say Earths climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding. In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined. The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever. Northern Australia had the wettest May-October on record, while the southwestern part of that country had its driest spell on record. And parts of the Amazon River basin struck by drought hit their lowest water levels in recorded history.
While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave, and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. Other volcanoes in the Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia sent people scurrying for safety. New York City had a rare tornado.
White House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters or do something about global warming: The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until societys emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.
And thats just the natural disasters. It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes, notably BPs busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. The worlds population is moving into riskier megacities on fault zones and flood-prone areas. 400 million to 500 million people in the world live in large cities prone to major earthquakes.
Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined. It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves, said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes. Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.
Climate scientists say Earths climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding. In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined. The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever. Northern Australia had the wettest May-October on record, while the southwestern part of that country had its driest spell on record. And parts of the Amazon River basin struck by drought hit their lowest water levels in recorded history.
While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave, and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. Other volcanoes in the Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia sent people scurrying for safety. New York City had a rare tornado.
White House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters or do something about global warming: The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until societys emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.
And thats just the natural disasters. It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes, notably BPs busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. The worlds population is moving into riskier megacities on fault zones and flood-prone areas. 400 million to 500 million people in the world live in large cities prone to major earthquakes.
