Extreme weather a wake-up call: experts

[webfact]

Extreme weather a wake-up call: experts

By PRATCH RUJIVANAROM 
THE NATION 

 

File photo : Abandoned vehicles sit at a car lot in Paradise, north of Sacramento, California on November 09, 2018/AFP

 

NEED TO BE MORE PREPARED AND ADAPT AFTER BILLION-DOLLAR DISASTERS OF 2018
 

THE WORLD needs to be prepared for more extreme weather events in future after disasters caused by climate change inflicted losses running into many billions of dollars in 2018, according to a study.

 

The British organisation, Christian Aid, last Thursday released its new report titled “Counting the Cost: a year of climate breakdown”, which revealed that in 2018 all the six populated continents were hit by 10 catastrophic climate-related disasters that cost over US$1 billion (Bt32 billion) in economic damage.

 

 

The report and many other scientific research on climate change have similarly identified climate change as the major factor behind these billion-dollar disasters. 

 

The onus has now been placed on governments, businesses, and the people to build climate resilience and adaptation abilities in order to prepare for even-more |devastating natural disasters |as a result of intensifying climate change.

 

Throughout 2018, the world witnessed extraordinarily severe weather events such as droughts, floods, fires, heat waves, typhoons and hurricanes, which not only killed, injured, and displaced large groups of the population but also caused major economic damage costing billions of dollars.

 

According to the Christian Aid report, there were at least 10 extreme-weather events that caused damage exceeding $1 billion, while four of those events inflicted losses exceeding $7 billion each.

 

The maximum losses, according to the report, were inflicted by Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which hit the US and parts of Central America and the Caribbean. 

 

Florence caused damage estimated at $17 billion and Michael caused $15 billion losses, according to the report.

 

The impacts of other disasters on the rest of the planet were also significant; Japan suffered heavily from extreme weather events such as heat wave, typhoon, and floods, which inflicted losses of more than $12.5 billion, making the disasters in Japan the world’s third most expensive.

 

Meanwhile, Thailand and Southeast Asia also felt the devastating impacts of climate-related disasters, including drastic changes in rainfall volume and pattern during the monsoon.

 

According to water data from the National Hydroinformatics and Climate (ThaiWater), it was found that the Mekong subregion received extraordinarily higher precipitation from the unusually strong monsoon. 

 

The sharp rise in rainfall this season triggered widespread floods throughout the Mekong River Basin and led to the collapse of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoi Dam in southern Laos, which killed over 70 people and displaced thousands.

 

However, in contrast to wetter conditions and floods in most parts of Thailand, the nation’s precipitation chart by ThaiWater indicated that some parts of Thailand’s Northeastern and Central regions were facing drought, as the volume of rainfall in these areas was substantially lower than average.

 

Christian Aid’s report pointed out that these billion-dollar disasters and bizarre weather patterns are linked to human-caused climate change. 

 

The report explains that |climate change is strengthening the power and severity of |some weather events such as typhoons 

The rise in global temperature is also contributing to reduced rainfall, which cause wildfires and drought more often.

 

From the horrific trend of global climate-related disasters this year, Prof Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, stressed that humanity urgently needed to tackle climate change to prevent more destructive disasters in the future.

 

Rapid fall in emissions needed

 

“The world’s weather is becoming more extreme before our eyes – the only thing that can stop this |destructive trend from escalating is a rapid fall in carbon emissions,” Mann said.

 

Meanwhile, Greenpeace country director for Thailand Tara Baukamsri urged all stakeholders to help strengthen society’s resilience to climate change and empower its adaptation abilities to cope |with more intense |disasters and environmental |degradation as a result of climate change.

 

“Even though people in rural areas face greater impacts from climate change compared to people in the cities, the urban folks’ lack of connection with nature and understanding is making it harder for them to adapt to environmental change than their rural counterparts,” Tara said.

 

“So we need to fill these gaps so as to lessen the impacts from climate change on people and our society.”

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30361376

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-12-31

[bendejo]

Those fires happened because they didn't clean the forest floor, like they do in Finland.

 

 

[kannot]

Balls,  the  whole bloody   report.

[zzaa09]

Nothing extreme about weather conditions.

 

It's the upright standing creatures we might be concerned with. 

 

Deflecting such faults upon nature is typical.

[sirineou]

1 hour ago, zzaa09 said:

Nothing extreme about weather conditions.

 

It's the upright standing creatures we might be concerned with. 

 

Deflecting such faults upon nature is typical.

or deflecting blame from themselves to squeeze every penny of profit from the current system. And then there are the tools of the above .

 

[DoctorG]

Not a shred of truth or evidence in this report.

[ratcatcher]

               Paradise                                                 Hell

[simtemple]

Another perspective.

[from the home of CC]

Blaming that dam construction collapse in Laos on the weather,  like it had nothing to do with poor engineering lol, South Koreans must love that statement.

[DrTuner]

Useless to count in $, the overflowing populations are getting more like sardine cans, so any given area will contain more wealth. 

[digger70]

The so called experts forget that there is No global warming effect It's just an scare mongering tactic. The ice age phenomenon ,,,

Experts from Cardiff University have offered up an explanation as to why our planet began to move in and out of ice ages every 100,000 years.

 

This mysterious phenomena, dubbed the '100,000 year problem', has been occurring for the past million years or so and leads to vast ice sheets covering North America, Europe and Asia. Up until now, scientists have been unable to explain why this happens.

Our planet's ice ages used to occur at intervals of every 40,000 years, which made sense to scientists as the Earth's seasons vary in a predictable way, with colder summers occurring at these intervals.

 

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-10-planet-ice-age-years.html#jCp

Edited January 1, 2019 by metisdead
Edited as per fair use policy.

[CGW]

Scaremongering as an excuse to increase taxes? ????

[Cadbury]

9 hours ago, webfact said:

The British organisation, Christian Aid,

An outpouring of alarmist nonsense from weather "experts" called Christian Aid in the hope that money will come pouring in to fund the administration and pay the salaries of management and staff.

Al Gore does much the same when he needs money to maintain his many luxury homes and to keep he and his family living in the lifestyle to which they have been accustomed.

 

[rudi49jr]

I have just turned 60 last month. Now sixty years, in the overall scheme of things, is nothing more than the blink of an eye, but in my lifetime I have already witnessed significant changes in the weather. Yet the climate deniers still stick their heads in the sand, proclaim it's all scaremongering and there's nothing wrong with the weather or the climate, even if the overwhelming majority of climate (and other) scientists say otherwise.

 

 

[BritManToo]

7 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

I have just turned 60 last month. Now sixty years, in the overall scheme of things, is nothing more than the blink of an eye, but in my lifetime I have already witnessed significant changes in the weather.

60 years back, I remember the summers in the UK as slightly warmer and drier.

The sea hasn't moved, it may be a bit wetter and colder, but none of the 'climate change' predictions seem to have happened, mostly the opposite.

 

Please specify what 'significant changes' you've noticed, and that I haven't?

Edited December 31, 2018 by BritManToo

[Cadbury]

7 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

60 years back, I remember the summers in the UK as slightly warmer and drier.

The sea hasn't moved, it may be a bit wetter and colder, but none of the 'climate change' predictions seem to have happened, mostly the opposite.

 

Please specify what 'significant changes you've noticed', and that I haven't?

I remember back in the 70's when it was predicted the world would experience another ice age and humanity was doomed. I seem to recall that was to do with aerosols and refrigerant gases and holes in ozone layers and the like, can't remember precisely. 

 

[Bill Miller]

rudi49jr is exactly right. The deniers will deny right up until they are nostril deep in melted arctic ice. They know more and are smarter than 97% of the world's climatologists.
Ya know, it does not matter if other factors are at play in this situation; man made pollution has an effect in the overall picture and people who cannot see this are, IMO, simply stupid.
Efforts to minimize this factor can only help to reduce the severity and extent of climate driven extreme weather events.
"The Day  After Tomorrow" is one of my favourite films about the possible consequences of continued inaction.
I only care about my nieces and nephews at this point, as I have been a successful member of ZPG (Zero Population Growth) since 1972. Too bad we underestimated the greed and self interest inherent in the human animal.

[nglodnig]

And the "drought" in South Africa (which is largely desert) was in Cape Town, where despite the population trebling in the last few decades no extra reservoirs were built... but still it's nice to have a scapegoat "outside of your control" to cover up your own incompetence.

[zzaa09]

The highly invented end is near......

[rudi49jr]

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

60 years back, I remember the summers in the UK as slightly warmer and drier.

The sea hasn't moved, it may be a bit wetter and colder, but none of the 'climate change' predictions seem to have happened, mostly the opposite.

 

Please specify what 'significant changes' you've noticed, and that I haven't?

I don't know if you've noticed, but 17 out of the 18 years we've had so far this century have been record breaking, weather-wise, mostly because of higher temperatures. Also because of ever longer lasting (and hotter) heatwaves, droughts and/or wet periods. This year, where I live, the average annual temperature has been almost 2 degrees higher than normal. And we've had a dry and hot summer like never before. Is that enough 'specification' for you?

 

My father grew up in a town on a river. He told me that in the 1930's that river regularly froze over, so that you could walk across the ice to the other side. I grew up in that same town, but I never saw the river frozen over. Winters were often cold when I was growing up in the 60's, with lots of snow and smaller waterways frozen over, and there were quite a few very cool and rainy summers that I did not particularly enjoy. Over the last 20-30 years, most winters have been quite mild, some of them even without any frost at night, and most summers have been (much) warmer. When I was 15, thunderstorms in the summer were few and far between, whereas over the last 10-15 years there have been summers with thunderstorms almost every afternoon.

 

In Thailand I have noticed that the cool season tends to become shorter and not as cool as it used to be, and the hot season is getting longer and (much) hotter.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by rudi49jr

[BritManToo]

7 minutes ago, rudi49jr said:

Over the last 20-30 years, most winters have been quite mild, some of them even without any frost at night,

Snow predicted in the UK next week, snowed last year, and the year before.

In 2009 it was so cold we ran across the local reservoir.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8089083/uk-weather-forecast-coldest-winter-on-record-snow-new-year/

Edited December 31, 2018 by BritManToo

[from the home of CC]

pretty big blow coming this week into the gulf... big rain for someone.

[RickBradford]

1 hour ago, rudi49jr said:

This year, where I live, the average annual temperature has been almost 2 degrees higher than normal. And we've had a dry and hot summer like never before. Is that enough 'specification' for you?

 

Well, you've convinced me. Your personal observation of a single year in a single location is unassailable evidence of catastrophic man-made global warming. Let's ban fossil fuels!

 

Now, let's all sing The Ode to Gaia:

 

 

"Gaia, queen of all our hearts,
Gaia brave in all your parts
Show us now our future clear
Vision far but action near!"

 

"Stop the fake denier lies
Social justice truths arise
Gendered feelings make us wise!
Global justice is our prize"

Edited December 31, 2018 by RickBradford

[Stargeezr]

Well until India, China, Russia, The Middle East, USA and a few others start charging

their populations a carbon tax, no other country should be trying to be green by

penalizing their populations with this tax. Climate change or not climate change.

Extreme weather should wake people up to some changes, like not having huge

trees close to their homes because of stronger winds. Don't have flammable grasses

and shrubs nearby as well. Quit using wood shingles on their roofs and use more

fire resistant materials instead. Guess that would be using common sense.

Geezer

[rickudon]

That man and his 'cold sun' video, from 2015, And since then we have had 3 of the hottest years on record..... load of crap. And more volcanic activity? Rubbish. 4 major eruptions in last 20 years of 20th century, one this century. If these news items cannot provide EVIDENCE, just claims, you know it is just fake news. Snow still sometimes falls in the UK, but not very often in the South-East. This year my brother was growing chilli peppers and tomatoes OUTDOORS in October in Surrey. Just wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago. Animal and plant distributions are slowly shifting. Some not found in the South-east anymore or very rare. New species becoming established. And remember over a third of the Arctic sea ice has gone in the last 40 years.

 

Weather patterns are changing. Just so happens that North America is getting more extreme events - colder and hotter. What we do know for certain - the world has warmed approximately 1 degree centigrade in the last 100 years. Sea level is rising by about 3 mm a year, most glaciers are in retreat, All these things are happening at a slowly accelerating rate, and are demonstrable FACTS. Stick to facts, not hearsay, and you get the truth.

[JulesMad]

Paradise seems to exist... It is in California....

It doesn't look at all how I imagine my Paradise ????