GEJET:
Court dismisses demand to halt Sendai reactors A Japanese high court has dismissed a request by residents to suspend operations of 2 nuclear reactors at the Sendai nuclear plant in southwestern Japan. The Miyazaki branch of the Fukuoka High Court gave its decision on Wednesday.
USA:
5 Dead in Houston as Flash Floods Leave Thousands Stranded and Without Power All five victims were found inside vehicles submerged in high floodwaters. “Houston residents should avoid travel at all costs today.”
Disaster plans often neglect historic preservation (USA) In Florida, for instance, they found that 23% of the sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places are located in a 100-year floodplain. Most communities have not integrated historic preservation into their disaster management plans. Their survey of state hazard mitigation plans found just 40 percent included a representative from historic preservation on the core planning team while 60 percent did not. "Many disaster mitigation plans make no mention of historic resources," Rumbach said. "As more and more communities bank on historic resources to benefit the local economy, this needs to be remedied." Economics aside, he said, many communities draw a sense of identity from these historic sites and can become unmoored when they are damaged or destroyed.
Netherlands:
Dutch public works department reinforces coastline at Zandvoort (Dutch) 2.4 million cubic meters of sand are being applied to the coast of Zandvoort and Bloemendaal. This previously happened in 2004 and 2008. The sand is deposited 750 meters from the beach at a depth of five meters. Wind, waves and currents then gradually spread the sand towards the beach. The work takes place over a length of 7.5 kilometers along the coastline, without disrupting beach visitors.
Snow in North of Netherlands and Randstad (Dutch) including fierce hail storms, leading to serious traffic accidents.
Other:
Storm surges projections in Europe According to the findings, the North and Baltic Sea coasts show the largest increases in storm surges, especially towards the east. In contrast, southern European coasts can expect minimal change.
Can medieval societies teach us how to adapt to climate change? “This is a period when there were not large pressures from outside Byzantine society, such as invasions from external enemies. This was mainly an agricultural society, although very complex for a preindustrial society,” Xoplaki says. “And this complexity seemed to have supported the society in adapting to changing climatic conditions.” But it wasn’t a time of climatic stability: climate models show that during this period, Constantinople and its surroundings saw less rainfall, overall warmer temperatures and colder winters. Scientists call this the “Medieval Climate Anomaly,” which was followed by a “Little Ice Age.”
Firstly, good decision making requires good evidence of what works and what doesn’t work.
To make better choices about how to design and implement emerging climate change responses such as National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), policy makers and planners need to understand when EbA can be an effective response to climate change.Scientists therefore need to help policy-makers understand the conditions under which EbA works, and the benefits, costs and limitations EbA entails compared to other adaptation options such as hard infrastructural approaches.
Secondly, the capacity of institutions to implement EbA needs improving. This is as true at the local level as it is for higher levels of management and planning. In Chanda Beel, for example, local policies and institutions are weak, and there is no wetland resource management plan so the Beel faces over-exploitation and loss of important resources. The system established by the Ministry of Land leaves local communities with little power to manage the resources on which they rely and little ability to earn a living as water-bodies are leased out to powerful and often corrupt intermediaries. This reinforces the marginalisation and vulnerability of fishers in particular.
As with its sister, Community-Based Adaptation (CBA), EbA is based on local priorities, needs, and knowledge, and fully integrates local people into planning at all stages in the implementation of any project. But it also needs to operate at other scales. Working at the level of the watershed is important in Chanda Beel, for example, where water flow may be affected by changes outside the local area.
Likewise, EbA needs to go beyond small project-level initiatives to be mainstreamed into government processes, such as those relating to national adaptation planning. EbA can be combined with, or even used as a substitute for engineered infrastructure or other technological approaches. It is now time for governments to recognise this and do more to implement EbA. In Bangladesh in particular, little attention has historically been given to eco-system-based flood management measures, and in the face of growing climate change challenges in the years ahead, this needs to change.
The Problems With “100-Year Floods” The term “100-year flood” is used in an attempt to simplify the definition of a flood that statistically has a 1-percent chance of occurring in any given year. This attempt to simplify does so at the expense of offering any meaning whatsoever. You could have 100-year-floods three years running. You could have two 100-year floods in a single year. Or you might go 300 years or more without a single one. Probability is weird like that. Also of note from a probability standpoint: if you gamble with a 1 percent chance of losing once a year for thirty years, you end up with a 25 percent chance of crapping out at least once. Think about those odds the next time you sign a mortgage for a house in what is reassuringly described to you as located in a 100-year floodplain. (Across thirty years in a 500-year floodplain, you run a six percent chance of losing.) And there is such a thing as official 100- and 500-year floodplains. They exist to determine who must buy flood insurance and how much they must pay, and whether or not developers can or should be allowed to build in certain low-lying areas.
Natural disasters since 1900: Over 8 million deaths, 7 trillion US dollars As part of CATDAT, James Daniell has collected and evaluated over 35,000 natural disaster events since 1900 globally. Around a third of economic losses between 1900 and 2015 have been caused via floods. Earthquakes have caused around 26 percent of losses, Storms around 19 percent, Volcanic eruptions around 1 percent. "Over the last 100+ years the economic losses via natural disasters, in absolute terms, have increased," said Dr. Daniell, who conducts research at KIT as a John Monash Scholar is at the Geophysical Institute as well as the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology CEDIM. Over the whole time period, floods have caused the highest amount of economic losses, however, in recent times, since 1960, the highest percentage has switched to storm (and storm surge) with around 30% of losses.
Ecuador earthquake: Aid agencies step up efforts The 7.8-magnitude earthquake left at least 480 people dead, more than 4,000 injured and 231 missing. Scientists say there is no connection between the quake in Ecuador and a severe tremor in southern Japan, which also occurred on Saturday.
Landslide risk remains high a year after magnitude-7.8 Nepal earthquake In the past year, the U-M-led team has mapped 22,000 landslides caused by the Nepal earthquakes. The maps will be used to identify areas of continued high landslide risk. "We're releasing this new landslide inventory in time for the upcoming monsoon season so that government officials and aid organizations can use it to help a country that's still recovering from last year's disaster." Following last year's earthquakes, debris flows impacted villages and temporarily blocked rivers, creating a flood risk.
Vulnerable People:
REFLECTION: THE JUNK FOOD SYSTEM JUST KILLED ONE OF HIP-HOP’S GREATEST “If you were to create a meal that matched where the government historically aimed its subsidies, you’d get a lecture from your doctor; more than three-quarters of your plate would be taken up by a massive corn fritter (80 percent of benefits go to corn, grains and soy oil). You’d have a Dixie cup of milk (dairy gets 3 percent), a hamburger the size of a half dollar (livestock: 2 percent), two peas (fruits and vegetables: 0.45 percent) and an after-dinner cigarette (tobacco: 2 percent). Oh, and a really big linen napkin (cotton: 13 percent) to dab your lips.”
With federal food priorities like this, is it any surprise that we have what some call “food apartheid,” and that whether you are nourished and healthy is determined primarily by your race, your class, and where you live?
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