Interesting Article Alert: Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

Just doing my usual morning perusal of articles and I believed this one from Time Magazine looked worthy of a blog post! At first I was confused and I believed the article was trying to bring attention away from the climate change issue however I quickly realized that these disasters were still affected by human development paving over natural barriers to natural disasters. Here's a choice quote to get you intrigued!

If climate change is having an effect on the intensities of storms, it's not obvious in the historical weather data. And whatever effect it is having is much, much smaller than the effect of development along coastlines. In fact, if you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 Natural Hazards Review paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused from $140 billion to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900," says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

Bill Nye...has a new TV Show!

Okay so this goes against last week's advice but Bill Nye's new 13 part series on Discovery's Planet Green channel is definitely more worthwhile than the latest "America's Top Model" episode. Why? The premise of the show is this:

On his new show Stuff Happens, acclaimed "Science Guy" Bill Nye explains to viewers what happens when we use stuff, where it goes when we're through with it, and what impact it all has on the environment and the entire planet. Whether it's in manufacturing, use, or disposal, all our stuff affects all our lives and the health of the Earth.

This definitely helps the general public make the connection that everything they do impacts the environment. Many of the children who grew up watching Bill Nye explain various topics like buoyancy and global warming are only gradually realizing that the problem of climate change will not be solved by their elders before the problem reaches them. The quick-fix solution to global warming is nonexistent...not to say it is impossible but that it will take several generations of humans working together to reverse the effects of almost a century of industrial pollution.

The reason why Bill Nye was so popular was because his show was easy to follow, full of interesting experiments and injected with bits of madcap humor. The show is still being shown in science classrooms today. I cannot imagine anyone else teaching us all why we need to start making changes in our lifestyles. His show already premiered on September 2nd at 9pm! Has anyone seen it? Please leave a review! The show will air weekly on Tuesday at 9pm.