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.
"The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet."
Well that tears it. I'm leaving. Anyone coming with me?
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
nature should get out of the way or face lawsuits
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
You had people all over the US talking about how third world uncivilized people deserved the tsunami. And people like michael savage etc. saying no federal aid should be sent to help other countries. Being libertarian, I can agree that with the concept of federal assistance being bad, I dont see why he has a vitriolic resentment of it considering how miniscule the foreign aid budget is (especially after you deduct military assistance to high income countries that somehow counts as "aid"). After the tsunami, I even came across a weblog (ernie i think) that said something to the effect of "those civilizations have been around for thousands of years longer than us and didnt advance so they deserved it. Too bad, f*ck 'em".
/fox) reported a blatant lie that foreign countries didnt step up to offer aid and assistance for new orleans.
d /index.html
.. but a vast majority of people are there because they didnt have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
Like every single individuals and kids who died or were orphaned had done stuff to deserve what happened to them.
And then there was the radio show host who said he didnt care about people who couldn't swim.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katrina.world.ai
The point I am making is that you have a large segment (thankfully not the majority) of the US population who thinks the rest of the world is all evil and can go to hell. These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there
By way of example our individual physiologies as systems experience runaway in terms of sexual orgasam ( ya sex, more people ) and in terms of death.
We're not only pushing the envelope in terms of population, we're also pushing the food chain that sustains us. The oceans are being fished clean to feed the growing population. It's not unlikely that the ocean food chain will collapse in our lifetime. Add in global warming and the projected more frequent, more violent storms; mix in our proclivity to live in large numbers on the coast lines, and, the recipe for disaster is all but made, no need to add in a killer like a super volcano.
The lesson of New Orleans is that we can't handle relatively mid range disasters. We speak of the first world in terms of Super Powers in quasi mythological terms that suggest we control nature. We're just outlaw apes broken free of our natural constraints and deluded in belief systems that talk to our immortality as mirror images of the creator of the universe.
The joke about to go very bad. May you live in interesting times.
cheers
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
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.
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.