How Much Can a Single Natural Event Affect You?

How prepared are you for human enhanced natural events?

Cyclone Nargis – May 2, 2008

Cyclone Nargis (also called Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis), a strong tropical cyclone, struck Myanmar on May 2, 2008, causing catastrophic destruction, killing  at least 146,000 people with thousands more still missing.  [Independent sources estimate the number of fatalities at more than 1 million.]

Foreign aid workers estimate that about 3 million people severely affected and were made homeless. According to a study,  up to 3.2 million Burmese lost their homes as a result of Nargis.

Percentage of the population affected by Cyclone Nargis: ~ 6.6% of Myanmar’s population

[Note: Population of Myanmar is about 48,798,000]

Sichuan Earthquake – May 12, 2008

The quake toll according to USGS:

• Death toll: At least 69,185 people were killed.
• No injuries: 374,171 people were injured.
• Other: 18,467 missing and presumed dead in the Chengdu-Lixian-Guangyuan area.
• More than 45.5 million people in 10 provinces and regions were affected.
• At least 15 million people were evacuated from their homes.
• More than 5 million were left homeless.
• An estimated 5.36 million buildings collapsed.
• More than 21 million buildings were damaged in Sichuan and in parts of Chongqing, Gansu, Hubei, Shaanxi and Yunnan.

Percentage of the population affected by Sichuan quake: 3.41% of China population

[Note: Population of China is about 1,335,530,000 or 19.8% of the world population.]

As one of the coldest winters on record looms over Sichuan, more than 1 million families displaced by the May 12 earthquake are still without proper homes, a senior provincial official said on Friday. China Daily. A home-bound migrant worker from Sichuan carries her child in a railway station in Shenyang, Liaoning province on Friday, after failing to find a job in the city. Many people displaced by the May 12 earthquake have left their hometowns in search of work. [Agencies] Image may be subject to copyright.

Next:

Floods leave 2.5% of Colombia’s population homeless

The Collapse Engine Revving UP!

The problems?

• Water scarcity. About 3 billion people are affected by water scarcity caused by diminishing reserves of freshwater (excessive use), climate change (drought, extreme climatic events, vanishing snow caps…)
• Excessive volumes of wastewater produced by growing urban population
• Increased demand for crops to feed growing urban population

The “Quick Fix!”

Irrigating urban agricultural land with untreated wastewater!

A possible outcome:

Spread of pandemic diseases leading to large scale collapse

A new 53-city study conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) reveals that about 80 percent of the cities studied use untreated or partially diluted wastewater for agriculture. At least 50 percent of the urban agricultural land in those cities is irrigated with raw or diluted wastewater.

“Irrigating with wastewater isn’t a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries. It’s a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well,” said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally.

“It’s a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares (50 million acres) across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well.”

Wastewater is most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice, pose a health threat to the farmers as well as the consumers.

“The negative and positive implications of wastewater agriculture have only recently received attention. This study offers the first comprehensive, cross-country analysis of the conditions that account for the practice and the difficult tradeoffs that arise from it,” said Colin Chartres, director general of IWMI.

About 200,000 people in Accra, 10 percent of the urban population of Ghana’s capital city, consume vegetables produced on just 100 hectares of urban agricultural land, which is irrigated with wastewater, according to the IWMI report. “That gives you an idea of the large potential of wastewater agriculture for both helping and hurting great numbers of urban consumers.” Raschid-Sally said.

“And it isn’t just affluent consumers of exotic vegetables whose welfare is at stake. Poor consumers of inexpensive street food also depend on urban agriculture.” She reported.

Related Links:

• www.iwmi.org
• Cgiar (!)

• IWMI: water for food, water for life – summary [PDF file 4Mb]
• Irrigation with polluted water or wastewater is widespread [PDF]
• HEALTH RISKS OF IRRIGATION WITH UNTREATED URBAN WASTEWATER IN THE SOUTHERN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN [PDF]

Nature’s Defense Mechanisms

How Do Natural Events Form Nature’s Defense Mechanisms?

1. Extremity. They exceed the normal parameters creating significant differences in the events outcome.
2. Selective Targeting. This phenomenon could probably be explained as reflex action.
3. Change of Rhythms. Changes in the established cyles, patterns, tempo and behavioral modes of natural events may offset positive feedback systems.
4. Other Mechanisms.

Are Extreme Precipitation Events Nature’s Defense Mechanisms?

Related Links:

• What’s a Hydrokong?

Google Violates the US Constitution and International Law

The Human Rights of an Octogenarian Chinese Woman

[At the time of publishing this post] Google had effectively blocked the following posts from its search engines:

Brave New Zealanders Bash Octogenarian Chinese Woman to Death and

New Zealand Racist Storm Worse Than China Quake at

New Zealand: Plumbing the Depth of Depravity

Google Censorship is a Flagrant Violation of Our Freedom of Speech!

Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The United States Constitution protects opinions under inalienable 1st Amendment free speech rights.

The right to freedom of speech is also guaranteed under international law through numerous human-rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

How much longer is Google allowed to continue its censorship in violation of the United States Constitution and the international law?

Global Food Shortages

Food riots caused by rising food and fuel prices are already a recurring nightmare. How ugly will the global scene get as Earth’s fertility erodes further?

Main entry: We Need Food!

Related Links:

• Failing Ecosystems
• State of the World
• Future Scenarios
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
  
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• Tipping Point
• Topsoil
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World

World’s Top CO2 Polluters

Do you fight global warming, or prevent it?

World’s Top 33 Emitters of CO2

The top 20 emitters are responsible for about 80 percent of CO2 pollution. (Source: Wikipedia/Data were collected in 2004 by the CDIAC for United Nations. )

Original Entry: The Shrinking Window of Opportunity

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