Slashdot Mirror
Too Many People in Nature's Way
Ant writes "Wired News report that the dead and the desperate of New Orleans now join the farmers of Aceh and the fishermen of Trincomalee, villagers in Iran and the slum dwellers of Haiti in a world being dealt ever more punishing blows by natural disasters... ... "We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado. "The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet."
By one critical measure, the impact on populations, statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. More than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials reported at a conference on disaster prevention in January.
Those numbers don't include millions displaced by last December 2004's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people as its monstrous waves swept over coastlines from Indonesia's Aceh province to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and beyond. By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor.
But generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way, said Thomas Loster, a Munich Re expert. "More and more people are being hit," he said..." I'd also like to point out a project here to find housing for Katrina's victims; it tries to combine lists of sites offering housing, and do a meta-search.
The population is growing. It can't be that unsafe.
Perhaps we shouldn't rebuild on the lands that keep getting destroyed... I hear that's what they did in the days before governmental disaster relief.
Latewire
but generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way
Exactly. I don't think our planet is any more unstable then 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Yeah, maybe we have global warming but even so it makes much, much more of a difference that a hurricane making landfall at the Mississipi estuary affects several million people today compared to 10,000 in 1803 or maybe a couple hundred in 500 BC.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
a lack of preparation? New Orleans has known for a long time how vulnerable it was, but the levee system wasn't built to sustain anything above a category 3 storm.
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause. I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
You heard wrong, unless by "before government disaster relief" you mean "before there were governments and we all ate sticks and berries and ran from sabretooth tigers."
Serious. Check out the history of the Yangtzee and Ganges rivers going back almost 5,000 years, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia at the very dawn of civilization. Cities are generally built where they are useful, not where they are safe.
Those with a Libertarian or Conservative leaning sometimes forget that Taxes purchase something useful for you: civilization.
The government diaster relief you deride so much makes civilization happen in North America. Just the cost of doing business here. Move to Somalia if you want to live someplace where there's no tax burden.
SoupIsGood Food
Planning so so poorly thought out, a kid playing SIM City would come up with better plans. And that is exacly my point. We have simulation software that is inextensive. Tons of historical data to pull from. We know how to design better levee systems, bridges and canals. But the political system fails us again and again.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel. That is unforgivable. Disasters have happened all over the world this year - in Portugal and Romania, fire and flooding respecitvely. The people from other countries in Europe, and the governments of those countries, helped the victims. Spanish and French rescue efforts were underway very quickly when the fires in Portugal were blazing - yet in the USA, help was very slow coming from the US itself, and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why? What the hell? What the hell is going on with Bush?
Don't criticise Slashdot readers for criticising Bush - they are quite right to. Slashdot's audience, being geeks, are generally more intelligent and well-informed than the average US consumer: Think about it - could there possibly be a reason why so many Slashdotters are criticising Bush? I'll leave you to ponder it.
Liberal Ontarians and French Quebecers are draining Western Canada's wealth. Stop them now! Support Western separatism.
New Orleans is built on a flood plain not because of agriculture but shipping. If you're going to build a deep water port on the Mississippi river, you need to do so near the water.
Although this sounds impressive and devastating: "... 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003..."
The problem is the word "affected". I had a cold last year, was I one of the people "affected" by natural disasters? How are they defining whether or not someone was affected? You could say anyone who donated money to a relief fund was affected, or are they only referring to the number of people injured or that had property damage. What about someone who hid out in his bomb shelter for a week. Was that person affected? Does emotional disurbance count as being "affected"?
I'd prefer a concrete statistic, like number of people killed, number of homes destroyed. Saying that x people were "affected" doesn't tell us anything useful.
Reports like these remind me that we're not in the information age, we're in the data age. The information age will be next when we start compiling all this data into useful information.
The population can grow as long as there is energy available to support it. Energy, and oil specifically allows us to insulate ourselves from nature's forces by building habitat, artificially increasing food production etc. Whether it is safe isn't even part of the equation.
When we no longer have the means to protect ourselves (i.e. oil runs out), then Nature will be far more punishing than a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. Just imagine other cities in the state of New Orleans because there is no electricity, water, gas or food production. All of those comforts are entirely dependent on a shrinking supply of oil.
And Mitchel Cohen writes. . .