http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/10/content_11345433.htm
By Feng Yingqiu
YANGON, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Several international organizations from the United Nations and Asian countries have been helping Myanmar in weather forecasting a year after severe cyclone Nargis hit the country.
These organizations include the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Thailand-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), China Earthquake Administration (CEA), Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) and Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), according to the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology Department (MHD).
Deadly tropical cyclone Nargis, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit five divisions and states -- Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago,Mon and Kayin on last May 2 and 3, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon inflicted the heaviest casualties and massive infrastructural damage.
The storm has killed 84,537 people, leaving 53,836 missing and 19,359 injured according to official death toll.
Following the cyclone onslaught, the WMO sent a team to Myanmarto study MHD's undertakings carried out soon after cyclone and provided needful weather-related materials and technical assistance.
Two months after storm, Thailand started to seek ways of establishing in Myanmar an early warning network system against cyclone and a delegation, led by Minister of Information, Communication and Technology Mun Patanotai, visited the country for the purpose, meeting with its Myanmar counterpart and the ASEAN-Myanmar-United Nations Tripartite Core Group.
In addition to weather forecasting, Myanmar is also cooperating with more Thai organizations in carrying out rehabilitation work in cyclone-hit areas. These organizations are International Development Cooperation Agency, National Institute of Emergency Medicine Service System and Weather Forecast Bureau.
Meanwhile, initiated by the Thailand-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), a regional assessment center for natural disaster is being set up in Yangon to reinforce the country's seismological facilities.
The UNESCAP also planned to set up two seismograph stations and two sea-level measurement stations on Thamihla Kyun (Diamond Island) in Ayeyawaddy division in the coming years.
Moreover, building of 10 seismological observatories during the present fiscal year of 2009-2010 in cooperation with CEA and the Asia Disaster Organization (ADO) is also being planned. Of them, three will be respectively set up in Nay Pyi Taw, Kengtung and Dawei by the government, four in Yangon, Mandalay, Myitkyina and Lashio with the assistance of the CEA and three in Sittwe, Kalaw and Taunggyi with the aid of the ADO.
In February this year, the Japanese company of Mitsubishi Cooperation donated some dozens of high-frequency transmitters and receivers to Myanmar for installation at weather forecasting stations in Rakhine, Kayin Mon, Ayeyawaddy, Yangon and Taninthayi states and divisions.
With the facilities, daily weather forecasts could be reported to Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon for taking precaution against natural disaster.
Other Japanese organization -- the Japan International Cooperation Agency has also been helping Myanmar establish an early earthquake warning system by setting up seismographic network and record center in the country.
Furthermore, Myanmar and India are also seeking cooperation in monitoring tsunami, saying that details of the warning projects for the natural disaster will be touched on later.
Editor: Chris
Sunday, May 10, 2009
International organizations help Myanmar improve weather forecasting
Thursday, April 2, 2009
How the G-20 Can Pay for a Global Climate Deal
http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/global_labor_strategies/2009/03/how-the-g20-can-pay-for-a-global-climate-deal.html
The G-20 summit convening in London on April 2 is preparing to create a quarter trillion dollars of brand new stimulus money to help poor countries battle the global recession.
World leaders plan to use a little-known form of global currency to pay the freight, a currency known technically as "Special Drawing Rights" (SDRs) but often referred to as "paper gold." It’s a currency that can be issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Telegraph has reported that the U.S. government is keen on the idea.
Senior figures in the U.S. Treasury have been encouraging the Fund to issue hundreds of billions of dollars worth [of SDRs] to prevent the recession from turning into a global depression.
If leaders at the G-20 summit can create "paper gold" to jump-start the global economy, they can also turn it in a green direction to jump-start protection of the global climate.
They should put much of paper gold stimulus under discussion into an international fund, to help developing countries pay for climate protection. Such an action would remove the greatest stumbling block in the way of international climate action -- the lack of financing to pay for energy conservation, technology transfer, adaptation, forest conservation, clean energy, and research and development. It would allow negotiators to arrive in Copenhagen for climate talks at the end of the year with the finances in place to negotiate and sign a global deal.
Without the financing, the chances of success in Copenhagen are slim. Yves De Boer, the UN's climate chief, left no doubt about that in comments he made this week criticizing EU finance ministers for putting conditions on financial help for developing countries, contrary to promises made in Bali in 2007:
I think without clarity on finance from industrialized countries there will be no commitment from developing countries.
"Paper gold" offers a way out of this stalemate -- a way to mobilize resources without either taxing or borrowing. That’s why G-20 leaders are proposing to issue a quarter trillion dollars worth of new SDRs – and why paper gold can play a crucial role in protecting the climate, too.
Measures that would fight both global warming and global economic meltdown simultaneously are being called a "Green New Deal." At the climate talks in Poznan last December, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called a "Global Green New Deal" the best chance for securing a climate agreement in Copenhagen in late 2009. And in a February op-ed in the Financial Times, Ban together with Al Gore wrote,
What we need is both stimulus and long-term investments that accomplish two objectives simultaneously with one global economic policy response -- a policy that addresses our urgent and immediate economic and social needs and that launches a new green global economy.
World leaders convening at the G-20 have the opportunity to do just that.
The SDR Backstory
Countries normally set aside reserves, most often in gold and U.S. Treasury bills, as insurance to protect their currencies against speculation, runs, and other forms of economic adversity. If a country’s currency starts to plummet in value, the government can use the reserves to buy back its own currency and stabilize it.
The mountains of U.S. Treasury bills hoarded by China and Japan, for example, were purchased in order to protect their currencies against the kind of runs that devastated national currencies during the so-called Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Global currency reserves amount to trillions of dollars, and they currently sit idle in national treasuries.
In 1969, after a string of liquidity crises, the world’s major governments agreed to create SDRs to increase global liquidity. Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz explains that SDRs as "a kind of global money ... which countries agree to accept and exchange for dollars or other hard currencies." If countries are provided SDRs to add to the gold and foreign currency in their national reserves, money can be put to use for other purposes instead of sitting idle -- for things like combating global warming.
Several years ago, Stiglitz proposed that SDRs or a new "global greenback" along similar lines be used to supplement other reserve currencies. They would be issued for investment in developing countries and for "global public goods" like environmental projects, health initiatives, and humanitarian assistance. They would have the added benefit of checking global deflation and would help countries with trade deficits avoid ruinous devaluations and runs on their currencies.
Until the current economic crisis, such ideas received little public attention -- indeed, few except international economists even knew SDRs existed. But since the beginning of 2009, discussion of paper gold has exploded. George Soros has called for "trillions of dollars" in SDRs to be issued. And now British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has campaigned for countries to agree to a new allocation of SDRs at the G-20 meeting that starts on April 2, and the U.S. seems to be warming to the idea.
These world leaders are well aware of the threat of global warming and the cost of fighting it -- roughly half a trillion dollars a year, according to the British government’s Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. That amounts to about 1 percent of global GDP for the next three to four decades. So far, however, none of these leaders has publicly discussed using paper gold to help pay for climate protection.
Green Paper Gold Can Finance Climate Protection
In the same way that economic stimulus measures around the world have pumped new funds into the green measures, global leaders can deploy "paper gold" to finance climate protection. It would surely qualify as a "global public good," as Stiglitz put it, and at the same time provide a needed economic stimulus.
The creation of paper gold is the international equivalent of increasing a nation’s money supply. It is what economists call "quantitative easing," and paper gold does it on an international scale. Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson explains the current G-20 proposal:
The principle behind it is that everyone would get bonus dollars. The objective is to create a windfall of cash.
As in a stimulus measure applied to a national economy (for example, America’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), if the windfall of cash is used to generate economic activity, then the value created by the new activity is what pays for the initial spending over time. The global recession has put millions of people and productive resources out of service. If they could be mobilized effectively, these vast unused productive capacities might well be sufficient by themselves to rebuild the global economy on a low-carbon basis before it is too late.
Some experts warn that paper gold will cause inflation, but we are in the midst of a historic crisis of deflation, in which the IMF, the U.S., and the great majority of economists are calling for economic stimulus to counter deflation. Issuing paper gold is precisely such an economic stimulus, providing at the global level what national stimulus plans provide at the level of an individual country.
The IMF is calling for a global stimulus of 2 percent of the world’s total product to sustain global demand in the current economic downturn -- about $1.2 trillion. Less than half of that would cover the projected annual cost of protecting the world’s climate and also provide a stimulus at the same time.
Further, if paper gold is used to stimulate work and production through green public works using material and human resources that would otherwise lie idle, they will create new value at least a great as their own value, forestalling any inflationary effect. Even if there were an inflationary effect, it would affect all countries approximately equally, so that one of the main downsides of inflation – exchange rate volatility -- would not occur.
It is easy to agree in theory that all countries should coordinate their economies to provide their fair share of the needed global economic stimulus, but in practice, they often pursue their own national interests -- or those of their most politically powerful constituencies. That's why national stimulus spending carries a risk. The stimulus will create new spending at home -- but it may primarily benefit the economies of other nations that supply cheap exports and do not stimulate their own economies -- something called a "free rider" problem. Paper gold, however, overcomes this because it stimulates the global economy as a whole, and therefore benefits the global economy as a whole.
As Tom Vosa, head of economic research at nabCapital in London explains, "If one or two countries do fiscal packages, that’s simply going to boost the export market for countries which haven’t." There’s widespread agreement among the world’s biggest countries that the current global financial and economic crises require global solutions, and that's why paper gold is being looked at as a powerful new tool for concerted international action.
How It Can Work
There is one serious problem with using SDRs for climate protection: many believe the IMF has a poor record of environmental stewardship and concern for the poor, and environmental and social justice advocates cringe at the notion of expanding the IMF’s reach into climate territory.
There are two possible solutions. Countries can agree to create an entirely new form of paper gold, such as the "global greenback" proposed by Stiglitz, that does not involve the IMF, but such a reinvention of the wheel is likely to be slow, contentious and impractical. That is why in our current economic and climate emergency, an alternative built on existing mechanisms is necessary, one that would require the IMF to issue SDRs to a global climate protection trust fund overseen by another institution -- such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).
The UNEP’s authoritative scientific committee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), could play a major role in setting criteria and evaluating the results. Countries would apply to the trust fund for green paper gold and be allowed to use it solely to implement their national plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and honor international climate commitments.
Complete transparency in allocating and contracting would be an ironclad condition for receiving green paper gold. The funds would be allocated based on countries’ need in paying for their own climate protection costs and the importance of their efforts to global climate protection targets. The funds could also be allocated, as Stiglitz has suggested, by competition among countries for the most worthwhile projects.
International climate protection efforts have been stymied by conflict between developed and developing countries over who should bear the cost of mitigation and adaptation, but green paper gold can provide the basis for a "grand bargain" in which climate protection would be an environmental and economic win-win, with poor countries least able to pay at the front of the queue.
If the Copenhagen climate negotiations are to succeed, they must find a way to finance climate protection efforts. If world leaders are serious about protecting the global economy and global climate, they should commit to a green paper gold bargain at the April 2 conference in London and consummate the deal at Copenhagen.
[Originally published at SolveClimate.com]
Friday, March 20, 2009
Untimely rain suspends salt production in Myanmar cyclone-hit areas
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6617697.html
Salt production in some Myanmar's cyclone-hit areas has been suspended as salt fields in the areas were destroyed by the rain starting from the last weekend to Monday, the local Biweekly Eleven News reported Thursday.
Quoting local salt producers, the report said salt production work had to be stopped in the areas including Laputta, Haigyigyun and a number of villages in Ayeyawaddy division hit by the untimely rain and the production could only restore if there is no more rain to come.
The temporary suspension of salt production has prompted the soaring of salt prices which were once dropping before the mishap.
Local salt producers are distressed over the climate change although they could once resettle their work after last May storm with the loan assistance provided by the government.
Deadly cyclone Nargis, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit five divisions and states -- Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago, Mon and Kayin on May 2 and 3 last year, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon inflicted the heaviest casualties and massive infrastructure damage.
The storm has killed 84,537 people and left 53,836 missing and 19,359 injured, according to official death toll.
Source:Xinhua
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Global warming
http://www.educate-myanmar.com/2009/03/global-warming.html
Thursday, March 5, 2009
ကမၻာၾကီး ပူေႏြးလာတာ လူေတြ ေၾကာင့္ စက္ရုုံ ေတြေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္တယ္လိုု ့ ေျပာလာတာ ကိုု
ျပန္လည္ ေခ်ပ ၾကပါတယ္။
ကမၻာေပၚမွာရာသီဥတုု ေျပာင္းလဲတတ္တာ သဘာဝ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အေၾကာင္းမရွိအေၾကာင္း၇ွာ ျပီး အစိုုးရ ဆီ က ေထာက္ပန္ ့ေငြေတြရေအာင္ ဖန္တီးေရးသားၾကတာ ကိုုတင္ျပထားတာ ဖတ္ရပါတယ္။
Topic: Global Warming
Global Warming Man Made or Natural Cycle?
Over the last hundred years the Earth has been warming. This warming is believed to lead to many issues such as drought, weather extremes and famine. The man made global warming theory states that man made CO2 is causing Earth to warm at an alarming rate; thus, the warming will continue.by Adam Rink
(libertarian)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Over the last hundred years the Earth has been warming. This warming is believed to lead to many issues such as drought, weather extremes and famine. The man made global warming theory states that man made CO2 is causing Earth to warm at an alarming rate; thus, the warming will continue. While some scientists believe CO2 is the culprit, other scientists believe the world’s warming and cooling happens in cycles due to various factors. Some of these scientists believe that Earth is starting a cooling trend after a long warming trend. Therefore, the trillion dollar question is global warming caused by CO2 or is this Earth’s natural cycle?
Carbon dioxide is the gas that is responsible for global warming under the man made global warming theory. CO2 is also a part of everyday life. Therefore, this gas should not be confused with smog, which creates a low level ozone layer that can be harmful to humans. CO2 is less than 2% of the world’s atmosphere. Meanwhile 93% of all CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans; the rest is stored the biosphere in things like plants. Oceans move CO2 into the atmosphere and then remove it as continual cycle. Warmer waters, like tropical waters, store less CO2 than colder arctic or deep waters. As CO2 increases in the Earth’s atmosphere, the oceans work harder to remove it. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased 30% since the pre-industrial era. The ocean has also increased its absorption of CO2 from roughly 2.0 Pg of CO2 in the 1980s to 2.4 Pg in the 1990s. Along with the oceans increased CO2 absorption, plants and trees also take in more CO2. This extra absorption of CO2 increases crop yields and plant growth.
The question arises if man is increasing the CO2 significantly or if the oceans are naturally warming and releasing more CO2 as a part of a cycle? Unfortunately, most graphs shown in news articles only go back 120 years, starting in the 1880s. One glance at these graphs and a person could easily deduce that man and industrialization has caused global warming. Many seem to forget that the last ice age was over 100,000 years ago, so looking at the last 120 years for temperature change seems inadequate. Archeologists have found cities under the oceans, such as the one in India that is 9500 years old. This indicates that the Earth must have been warming for some time, possibly including many warming and cooling cycles. Going back 2000 years paints a better picture than the 120 year "hockey stick" graph. In the Middle Ages the temperature deviation was the same as today. This period did not have industry that created man made CO2.
Images are from GlobalWarmingArt.com, red line is the most recent reconstructed model. Darker lines indicate older models.
Another interesting fact is that even though man made CO2 has exponentially increasing from 1950 to today, temperature from 1940 to 1980 decreased. Scientists back in the 1970s believed that pollution was causing global cooling. The real problem is that any model based off a lower point, like 1880s temperature, would make the model appear that the earth is on fire. Instead of using incomplete models, models need to include a couple of temperature cycles to fully understand how the Earth behaves.
At least 70-80% of the Earth’s warming effect comes from water vapor and clouds not CO2. CO2 traps about 10-20% of the world’s heat. Other contributors to warming include high altitude cirrus clouds and sunspots. Cirrus clouds block radiant heat from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere. Sunspots have been known throughout history to have an effect on the Earth’s temperature. From 1645 to 1715 there were very few sunspots recorded. This also was a period referred to as the little ice age. Over the last 60 years, our sun has been very active with a record number of sun spots recorded. This could also be the reason that ice caps on Mars are melting and other planets in our solar system are experiencing warming, like Jupiter.
By studying models that are more inclusive, scientists are now worried about the warming trend reversing. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing at a record pace. The media seems to focus on just the Wilkins ice sheet, which is only 0.01% of Antarctica’s ice cover. The rest of the ice cover is returning 60% faster than last year at 4.0 square km. Even Greenland is seeing a 15 year high in ice levels between Canada and itself. In the US this spring has been much cooler than normal for most of the country. These events are leading more and more scientists to believe the Earth is in for a cooling trend. If global cooling occurs, agricultural life could change as we know it. This could lead to a worldwide food shortage and a displacement of millions of people.
Currently, the United States Congress is debating a potential five trillion dollar energy policy. This policy will place carbon caps on corporations. This will raise cost of energy significantly. Money raised from these caps would be redistributed to more expensive renewable energy projects. The poor will suffer the most as they will have to contend with rising food prices, rising gas prices and now rising energy costs. With so many factors causing global warming, the anti- CO2 movement seems very reckless and will cause many people to suffer.
Fighting emissions from cars and factories is a very noble cause. Pollution can cause all sorts of problems like asthma. To say the world is warming because of humans is a very bold claim. Lots of factors go into warming the Earth. To focus on just one, CO2 is very naïve. It can also be very dangerous as it sacrifices our economic stability and standard of living. Doubling the price of gasoline over the last few years has caused food costs to shoot up; fishermen and truckers to be put out of business; and many low income people to suffer. Now, Congress is debating to do the same thing to electricity prices.
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Posted by May Burma at 6:14 PM
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of believing and contributing to the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.
Climate and economy are being linked. Yes there has been warming since the Pleistocene. Climate is a multiple input, multiple loop, multiple output, complex system. The facts and the hypotheses do not support CO2 as a serious 'pollutant'. In fact it is plant fertilizer and seriously important to all life on the planet. It is the red herring used by the left to unwind our economy. That issue makes the science relevant.
Water vapour (0.4% overall by volume in air, but 1 – 4 % near the surface) is the most effective green house gas followed by methane (0.0001745%). The third ranking greenhouse gas is CO2 (0.0383%), and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high; making seawater a great 'sink'; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
CO2 has been rising and Earth has been warming. However, the correlation trails. Correlation, moreover, is not causation. The causation is being studied, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome.
“Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy - the cosmic rays - liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.”
As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that.
Although the post 60s warming period appears to be over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with more humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. Ancient sedimentary rocks and paleontological evidence indicate the planet has had abundant liquid water over the entire span. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat.
Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Research_divisions/Sun_Climate/Experiments_SC/SKY.aspx
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Myanmar, Thailand cooperate in weather forecasting
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6580163.html
Myanmar and Thailand are cooperating technically in promoting Myanmar's weather forecasting and rehabilitation work in cyclone-hit areas, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday.
The cooperation is being carried out between Myanmar's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) and Thailand's International Development Cooperation Agency, National Institute of Emergency Medicine Service System and Weather Forecast Bureau.
Promotion of capacity building of Myanmar's DMH, national multi-hazard early warning system and the rehabilitation work on cyclone-affected areas related to agriculture, health, social and education sectors, disaster preparedness plan and joint work procedure are covered by the cooperation project, the report said.
In July last year, two months after cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, Thailand started to seek ways of establishing in Myanmar an early warning network system against cyclone.
A Thai delegation, led by Minister of Information, Communication and Technology Mun Patanotai, visited the country then, meeting with its Myanmar counterpart and the ASEAN-Myanmar-United Nations Tripartite Core Group.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has set up an emergency telecommunication center (ETC) in Yangon to help for quick communication access in disaster relief and restoration works.
Deadly cyclone Nargis hit five divisions and states -- Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago, Mon and Kayin on May 2 and 3 last year, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon inflicted the heaviest casualties and massive infrastructure damage.
The storm has killed 84,537 people and left 53,836 missing and 19,359 injured according to the official announcement.
Source:Xinhua
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Trees won't stop tsunamis, scientists warn
http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=47611410
EUREKALERT
Contact: Andrew Baird
Andrew.Baird@jcu.edu.au
61-040-028-9770
ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies
Claims that coastal tree barriers can halt the might of a tsunami are false and dangerous, a team of international marine scientists said today.
There are many reasons for preserving the world's dwindling stocks of mangroves, but protecting people from tsunamis is not one of them, they say.
On the eve of the anniversary of the devastating 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, which claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives around the eastern Indian Ocean, researchers have issued a strong warning against coastal communities and governments putting their trust in mangrove and tree barriers erected as a means of protection from earthquake-driven tidal waves.
"Following the Boxing Day Tsunami scientific studies were released which claimed that the damage to coastal communities had been less in places where there was a barrier of trees or coastal vegetation," explains Dr Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
"As a result there has been a lot of tree planting in coastal areas affected by the tsunami, in the hope it will protect coastal communities in future from such events.
"However these studies looked only at the presence or absence of vegetation and the extent of damage and did not take account of other important variables, like the distance of a village from the shore, the height of the village above sea level or the shape of the seabed in concentrating the tsunami's power."
The study by Dr Alexander Kerr of the University of Guam, Dr Baird, Ravi Bhalla and V. Srinivas of the Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning India concludes there is, as yet, no evidence that coastal tree belts can provide meaningful protection against a tsunami or, for that matter storm surges produced by cyclones, such as the surge that followed Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar early this year which killed over 150,000 people.
As a result it would be extremely dangerous to rely on tree planting alone to shield coastal communities in the event of future tsunami or storm surges, they warn and doing so could lead to further tragedies.
The team's analysis of the pattern of damage of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami shows that many variables were at work in determining how the force of the water affected people and structures on land, and these all need to be taken into account not just a few of them.
The findings have major implications for civil defence and emergency planning, the cost of restoring affected regions and in minimizing the death and destruction suffered by some of the poorest communities in the world, the team says.
"The idea that planting 'green belts' can both protect coastal communities and enhance their environment has been widely accepted," Dr Baird explains. "As a result a number of governments, aid agencies and scientists have been promoting it enthusiastically.
"However this could place the communities shielded in this way at future risk. Mangroves should be protected for their conservation value, and for the goods and services they provide to people even if they don't protect coastal dwellers from extreme events."
"In my own visits to the tsunami-ravaged areas, I saw places where quite heavy vegetation had provided absolutely no protection at all against the force of the ocean, and this led us to investigate the assumption more deeply. It turns out it was not well founded."
To fully explore what drives the flooding following tsunami like the Boxing Day Tsunami, and storm surges, like those that could accompany any of the many cyclones that hit northern Australia each year, an extensive, statistically-sound analysis needs to be carried out of all the factors which may act on the force of the waves driving inland.
These include the height of the settlement above the sea, its distance, the shape of the sea bottom and local land uses. These make the difficulty of accurately predicting tsunami damage much harder and a problem requiring rigorous analysis for multiple factors and their interaction.
In the meantime, there is much that can be done to limit the loss of life in future tsunami, in particular, early warning systems need to be installed, the population must be educated to recognise the signs of an imminent tsunami and evacuation plans need to put in place and practised. All these preparations are current in Japan, and should serve as an example to the rest of the world.
Their research report Roles of coastal bio-shields and their putative role in protecting coasts from large weather related disturbance events is soon to be published by the United Nations Environment Program.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Climate change, food security affecting Asian countries - Healthcare Minister
http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/12/15/news21.asp
“Every minute, a woman dies during pregnancy and childbirth because she did not receive adequate care and prompt treatment.
“By increasing interventions for safe motherhood, we can save the lives of half a million women and seven million infants each year, and at the same time prevent millions of women from suffering from infections, injury and disability,” said Minister of Healthcare and Nutrition Nimal Siripala de Silva at the International Conference of Parliamentarians of South East Asian Region countries. The conference was held in Hanoi, Vietnam on December 12.
The Minister said: Since its inception in 1981 in Beijing, the AFPPD has come a long way taking up many burning and vital issues in order to support the formulation of multi sectoral policies related to population and development in the countries of our regions.”
“These meetings have brought greater understanding and cooperation among the parliamentarians of our countries and they have helped us learn from the experiences of one another and on the whole to steer our policies in complimentary ways.”
“You have selected an important and extremely relevant theme for deliberations this year - “The climate and food security challenges in the light of population growth”, Minister de Silva said.
“I wish to emphasize that climate change and food security are two of the most significant issues that threaten the lives of the people of our countries, and in some instances they could threaten even our very survival as nations. Therefore we appreciate the work of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians to make us well aware of these issues and help to prepare ourselves well in advance to meet the challenges that are upon us.”
“Perhaps nowhere is the need for reproductive health services more urgent than in the fight against HIV/AIDS and in family planning. Reproductive health services that empower women and young people with life-saving information and skills will help prevent HIV from spreading and further reduce suffering and social and economic setbacks.
The UNFPA reminds us very rightly that directing more resources to all these issues is critical in attaining the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed framework to halve poverty by the year 2015,” he said.
“We are living in very uncertain times. Obviously, recent information on the meltdown in the American banking industry drew everyone’s attention, but the actual literal meltdown of ice in the North and South poles and of the Himalayas do not get sufficient attention but if the risks to humankind will be far greater than any bank collapse.”
“Countries of South East Asia are at different stages of development of their national food and nutrition policies. UN information indicates that countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar have already established their national policies and work plans.
Bhutan has included food security as a part of its primary healthcare programme. In Thailand we know that their food security policy is a major part of the health development plan and the healthy lifestyles strategy while DPR Korea and Timor Leste have concentrated on nutrition management in crisis situations,” the Minister said.
He said however the most critical issue in the Region right now is the increase in food prices and food insecurity. Rising food prices have been transmitted to the South East Asian countries but still the increases are slightly less than that seen internationally. A quick comparison indicates that the rise in Bangladesh has been the sharpest, while being moderate in Nepal with the lowest rise being in Indonesia.
The onset of the price increases have also varied, with some affected as early as 2006 and others not until mid 2008. The effect depends partly on the price but also on other factors such as recent natural disasters. Consumers in the countries with the highest national per capita incomes such as Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka had been less responsive to the change in prices than countries with lower GNPs.”
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tsunami
http://bimbel-padi-bekasi.blogspot.com/2008/12/tsunami.html
A tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, some volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large asteroid impacts and detonation of nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved, the effects of tsunami can be devastating. Since meteorites are small, they will not generate tsunami.
The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunami to submarine quakes,but understanding of the nature of tsunami remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.Many early geological, geographic, oceanographic etc., texts refer to "Seismic sea waves"—these are now referred to as "tsunami".Some meteorological storm conditions—deep depressions causing cyclones, hurricanes—can generate a storm surge which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore the surge can resemble a tsunami, inundating vast areas of land. These are not tsunami. Such a storm surge inundated Burma-Myanmar in May 2008.
Tsunami in history
Historically speaking, tsunami are not rare, with at least 25 tsunami occurring in the last century. Of these, many were recorded in the Asia–Pacific region—particularly Japan. The Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 caused approximately 350,000 deaths and many more injuries.
As early as 426 B.C. the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War about the causes of tsunami, and argued correctly that it could only be explained as a consequence of ocean earthquakes. He was thus the first in the history of natural science to correlate quakes and waves in terms of cause and effect:
The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent the sea is driven back, and suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.
The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae 26.10.15-19) describes the typical sequence of a tsunami including an incipient earthquake, the sudden retreat of the sea and a following gigantic wave on the occasion of the 365 A.D. tsunami devastating Alexandria.
Causes
A tsunami can be generated when converging or destructive plate boundaries abruptly move and vertically displace the overlying water. It is very unlikely that they can form at divergent (constructive) or conservative plate boundaries. This is because constructive or conservative boundaries do not generally disturb the vertical displacement of the water column. Subduction zone related earthquakes generate the majority of all tsunamis.
A tsunami has a much smaller amplitude (wave height) offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 mm above the normal sea surface. A tsunami can occur at any state of the tide and even at low tide will still inundate coastal areas if the incoming waves surge high enough.
On April 1, 1946 a Magnitude 7.8 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawai'i with a 14 m high surge. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.
Examples of tsunami being generated at locations away from convergent boundaries include Storegga during the Neolithic era, Grand Banks 1929, Papua New Guinea 1998 (Tappin, 2001). In the case of the Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis an earthquake caused sediments to become unstable and subsequently fail. These slumped and as they flowed down slope a tsunami was generated. These tsunami did not travel transoceanic distances.
It is not known what caused the Storegga sediments to fail. It may have been due to overloading of the sediments causing them to become unstable and they then failed solely as a result of being overloaded. It is also possible that an earthquake caused the sediments to become unstable and then fail. Another theory is that a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.,) caused the slump.The "Great Chilean earthquake" (19:11 hrs UTC) May 22, 1960 (9.5 Mw), the March 27, 1964 "Good Friday earthquake" Alaska 1964 (9.2 Mw), and the "Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake" (00:58:53 UTC) December 26, 2004 (9.2 Mw), are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated a tsunami that was able to cross oceans. Smaller (4.2 Mw) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunami that can devastate nearby coasts within 15 minutes or less.
In the 1950s it was hypothesised that larger tsunamis than had previously been believed possible may be caused by landslides, explosive volcanic action e.g., Santorini, Krakatau, and impact events when they contact water. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water into which the debris falls at a rate faster than the ocean water can absorb it. They have been named by the media as "mega-tsunami."Tsunami caused by these mechanisms, unlike the trans-oceanic tsunami caused by some earthquakes, may dissipate quickly and rarely affect coastlines distant from the source due to the small area of sea affected. These events can give rise to much larger local shock waves (solitons), such as the landslide at the head of Lituya Bay 1958, which produced a wave with an initial surge estimated at 524 m. However, an extremely large gravitational landslide might generate a so called "mega-tsunami" that may have the ability to travel trans-oceanic distances. This though is strongly debated and there is no actual geological evidence to support this hypothesis.
Characteristics
While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships.
As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, the wave is compressed due to wave shoaling and its forward travel slows below 80 km/h (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 km (12 miles) and its amplitude grows enormously, producing a distinctly visible wave. Since the wave still has a wavelength on the order of several km (a few miles), the tsunami may take minutes to ramp up to full height, with victims seeing a massive deluge of rising ocean rather than a cataclysmic wall of water. Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep breaking front.
Terminology
The term tsunami comes from the Japanese meaning harbor ("tsu", 津) and wave ("nami", 波). [a. Jap. tsunami, tunami, f. tsu harbour + nami waves.—Oxford English Dictionary]. For the plural, one can either follow ordinary English practice and add an s, or use an invariable plural as in Japanese. Tsunami are common throughout Japanese history; approximately 195 events in Japan have been recorded.
Tsunami are sometimes referred to as tidal waves, a term that has fallen out of favor, especially in the scientific community, in recent years because tsunami actually have nothing to do with tides. The once popular term derives from their most common appearance, which is that of an extraordinarily high incoming tide. Tsunami and tides both produce waves of water that move inland, but in the case of tsunami the inland movement of water is much greater and lasts for a longer period, giving the impression of an incredibly high tide. Although the meanings of "tidal" include "resembling" or "having the form or character of" the tides, and the term tsunami is no more accurate because tsumanis are not limited to harbours, use of the term tidal wave is discouraged by geologists and oceanographers.The only other language than Japanese that has a word for this disastrous wave is Tamil language,(dubious – discuss) and the word is "Aazhi Peralai". South Eastern coasts of India have experienced these waves some 700 years before and was a regular event by that time as per the stone carvings (scriptures in stone) read.
Signs of an approaching tsunami
There is often no advance warning of an approaching tsunami. However, since earthquakes are often a cause of tsunami, any earthquake occurring near a body of water may generate a tsunami if it occurs at shallow depth, is of moderate or high magnitude, and the water volume and depth is sufficient.
If the first part of a tsunami to reach land is a trough (draw back) rather than a crest of the wave, the water along the shoreline may recede dramatically, exposing areas that are normally always submerged. This can serve as an advance warning of the approaching tsunami which will rush in faster than it is possible to run. If a person is in a coastal area where the sea suddenly draws back (many survivors report an accompanying sucking sound), their only real chance of survival is to run for high ground or seek the high floors of high rise buildings.In the 2004 tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean drawback was not reported on the African coast or any other eastern coasts it inundated, when the tsunami approached from the east. This was because of the nature of the wave—it moved downwards on the eastern side of the fault line and upwards on the western side. It was the western pulse that inundated coastal areas of Africa and other western areas.
About 80% of all tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean, but are possible wherever large bodies of water are found, including inland lakes. They may be caused by landslides, volcanic explosions, bolides and seismic activity.Indian Ocean Tsunami According to an article in "Geographical" magazine (April 2008), the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 was not the worst that the region could expect. Professor Costas Synolakis of the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California co-authored a paper in "Geophysical Journal International" which suggests that a future tsunami in the Indian Ocean basin could affect locations such as Madagascar, Singapore, Somalia, Western Australia and many others. The Boxing Day tsunami killed over 300,000 people with many bodies either being lost to the sea or unidentified. Some unofficial estimates have claimed that approximately 1 million people may have died directly or indirectly solely as a result of the tsunami.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Global climate changes could lead to violence
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6113758.html
Experts say it will accelerate the race for food, water
By SCOTT CANON
McClatchy-Tribune
Nov. 15, 2008, 6:06PM
KANSAS CITY, MO. — A warmer planet could find itself more often at war.
The Earth's fast-changing climate has a range of serious thinkers — from military brass to geographers to diplomats — predicting a spate of armed conflicts driven by the weather.
Shifting temperatures lead to shifting populations, they say, and that throws together groups with long-standing rivalries and thrusts them into competition for food and water.
"It's not hard to imagine violent outbursts," said Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Smith helped write one of four major studies put out in a little more than a year by centrist organizations in Europe and the United States that warn climate change threatens to spark wars in a variety of ways.
Each report predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as once-bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea. They also expect violent storms to unsettle weak governments.
Just years away
Security analysts say profound dangers are just years, not decades, away. They already see evidence of societies at odds.
Ethnic groups clash in Sudan's Darfur region, trading gunfire in a conflict with climatological overtones. The armed thugs who rule Myanmar were exposed, and their regime knocked back on its heels, when Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people in May and the leadership responded so poorly. Likewise, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 began the fall of President George W. Bush's approval ratings.
Much more is going on in Darfur than climate change, but crop scarcity in the region has pushed rival ethnic groups onto the same turf.
Even those scientists who are most adamant that the planet is warming in unnatural ways don't blame single storms on climate change. But even conservative climatologists predict crazier weather that is capable of toppling governments.
"Governments that are already weak will be destabilized much more often and much more easily," said Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "And if cooperation isn't enough to stretch resources, then what happens?"
Military planning
Although still controversial in some circles — Congress has split along partisan lines over whether the military should plan for global warming — the scientific consensus is that the Industrial Revolution increased greenhouse gases that set off an unprecedented rate of climate change.
Growing seasons could lengthen. Frozen seas could thaw to make way for convenient shipping routes. Previously inaccessible spots could be ripe to gush oil.
Meantime, wetlands could dry up. Rivers could disappear. Scientists already think that hurricanes, blizzards and droughts are more frequent and more severe. Rising sea levels could send tens of millions of people scurrying for higher ground.
"The idea that somehow there are winners in this is wrong," said Peter Ogden, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress. "Even places that come out ahead will see pressure on them from outside from the losers."
Last year the Center for Naval Analyses gathered retired generals and admirals to gauge the potential for climate to cause conflict. The former commanders concluded that war would be more likely, that the U.S. military needed to plan for the new threats, and that the United States had to reduce its carbon emissions.
"We will pay for this one way or another," wrote retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former chief of the U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."
Developing countries stand most at risk, the studies conclude. Those countries lack the resources to absorb resulting disasters.
Consider Bangladesh. Long riddled by crushing poverty, it lies in a region that scientists expect will see even more devastating storms and the steady retreat of its coastline. That could send even more Bangladeshi Muslims running to the fence that predominantly Hindu India is building to keep them out.
Likewise, weather patterns that make it harder to grow food in Latin America could increase the rush to cross the southern U.S. border.
"People will pay no attention to borders. They will swamp borders. They will trample over them in desperation," said Raymond Callahan, a military historian at the University of Delaware.
Even efforts to mitigate global warming could prove dangerous.
Nuclear power doesn't add greenhouse gases, but it could mean the spread of doomsday technology to unstable parts of the world. Iran already is thought to be cloaking nuclear weapons ambitions inside "peaceful" nuclear facilities.
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