Saturday 12 October 2013

Cyclone Phailin

The pictures of Cyclone Phailin battering the East Coast of India are heartbreaking because you just know peoples lives are being to be destroyed and even lost by the time it has blown itself out.  
12 million people are in the path of the cyclone which forecasters have likened its size and intensity to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the US Gulf coast and New Orleans in 2005.
Seven people have so far lost their lives to the category five cyclone, the highest such rating and the US Navy's weather service said wind speeds at sea were gusting at 195mph.
'If it’s not a record it’s really, really close' said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, 'You really don’t get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever. This is the top of the barrel'. 
Shamefully, there are some people who still deny that extreme weather events like this are all part of the warming planet, preferring to ignore the advice of almost every climatologist on the planet warning an intensification of weather events and deliberately ignoring the evidence.
While they have spent the last few decades denying it, this is the devastating evidence that things have changed and people have been dying are now dying in even larger numbers because we did little or nothing about it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

so what are you doing to reduce global warming lucy?

q

Lucy said...

Lots. You?

Anonymous said...

Please share so we can learn!

Q

Lucy said...

I will dig out the pamphlet 'So you have decided to save the planet: A guide with pictures for right wingers' and 'Hey Dude, my gun keeps floating away in these floods'

Anonymous said...

i can't think of anything i voluntarily do to reduce global warming. i do some things for personal gain that help global warming (drive a vanpool with 6 passengers to save commuting expenses).

if global warming is a threat - and you know I deny - then it is concerning that i don't know anybody, doing anything, to reduce global warming. At best it is a by-product of immediate self-interest.

The USA is supposedly second in total CO2 contribution and in per capita (19 tons) is in a class of its own with Canada (18) and Australia (20). But why?
We got stuff like coal scrubbers, home insulation, we import more than we produce
We have relatively mild climate compared to most nations

Supposedly Mexico produces (4 tons) but I know they are a nightmare
every fall half of texas (bigger than the UK and Ireland combined) gets hazy from mexico burning fields
el paso is smoky because the Mexicans heat their homes by burning their trash and wood
they drive cars with no pollution controls – you can smell their cars when they visit here

maybe it is how many miles we drive annually…

q