#10 20 and 100 year floods across the country | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

newstfionline · 6 months ago

Text

Saturday, August 17, 2024

The California Counties Constantly on Fire (NYT) The Park fire started in late July outside Chico, Calif., and in just 10 days exploded to become the fourth largest in the state’s history. Three years before, the Dixie fire grew so large that it became the first fire to leap over the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 2020, the North Complex fires, sparked by lightning in Plumas National Forest, destroyed more than 2,300 structures and killed more than a dozen people. And in 2018, the Camp fire razed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, becoming the state’s deadliest fire to date. These four historic California fires burned in Butte County, which, along with neighboring counties near the foothills of the Sierras, has in the past decade seen much of its land engulfed in flames. Fires, of course, don’t know or stick to county lines. But calculating the share of counties affected by wildfires can provide insight into the growing wildfire risk statewide and across the American West. The area that burned in Butte and Plumas Counties is more than four times as large as the area that had burned in the previous decade. It’s not necessarily the case that more large fires are burning now than in previous decades, but the ones that do ignite are charring through much more land, according to Tirtha Banerjee, a professor and wildfire researcher at the University of California, Irvine.

Mexico’s truth commission reveals new evidence of ‘death flights’ during 1965-1990 ‘dirty war’ (AP) More evidence has emerged that Mexican authorities disposed of the bodies of dissidents in “death flights” during the country’s 1965-1990 “dirty war.” Mexico’s governmental Truth Commission said in a report Friday that recollections by witnesses and documents leaked over the years described the chilling last moments of the victims. The executions were part of an effort by the Mexican government at the time to eliminate leftist social and guerrilla movements. The victims, who have not been identified or counted, were pulled one by one to a bench at a military airfield near Acapulco. They believed they were going to have their photographs taken, but were instead shot in the back of the head, and their bodies dumped by plane out in the Pacific ocean. According to testimony by Gustavo Tarín, who served in a military police unit at the time, as many as 1,500 people may have been killed that way. Some of the victims may have been dying, but not yet dead, when they were pushed out of the planes.

Hurricane Ernesto lashes Bermuda (AP) Hurricane Ernesto began to pound Bermuda late Friday with heavy winds and rain after officials in the tiny British territory in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean opened shelters and closed government offices. The Category 2 storm located 95 miles (150 kilometers) south-southwest of Bermuda was packing maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (155 kph). It was moving northeast at 13 mph (20 kph). Ernesto’s large eye will likely be very near or over Bermuda early Saturday morning, with significant coastal flooding expected, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Ukraine offensive in Russia expands beyond Kursk region, soldiers say (Washington Post) Ukraine’s offensive into Russia has expanded to the region of Belgorod, with fierce fighting underway there as Kyiv’s forces in the neighboring region of Kursk showed signs of solidifying control Thursday. A celebratory mood over the surprise advance into Russian territory persisted among many troops returning from Kursk to Sumy on Thursday. But in contrast to the jubilance of some who fought in Kursk, the fighting in Belgorod has been fierce. The Russian troops in Belgorod appeared prepared for their arrival, the soldiers said, in contrast to the quick advances Ukrainian units made through Kursk. Although some had retreated, the area was fortified with dragon’s teeth antitank obstacles and heavily mined. Ukrainians came under intense attack by artillery, drones and aerial bombs almost immediately.

Ukrainian troops on the eastern front are struggling to hold back the enemy. (WSJ) Kyiv’s incursion into Russia this week embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and gave it the tactical initiative in one area for the first time in nearly a year, but the troops and weapons transfers from Ukraine’s already-strained front lines to accomplish that could make things worse. This summer, Moscow’s forces, which have gained territory faster than at any point since the first weeks of the war, are pushing toward Pokrovsk. Losing that logistical hub would sever a crucial supply route to Ukrainian troops. Officials in Pokrovsk yesterday began urging civilians to evacuate.

Thailand’s new prime minister renews the legacy of her father, Thaksin Shinawatra (AP) The election of Paetongtarn Shinawatra as Thailand’s prime minister represents a remarkable back-to-the-future moment. She is renewing the political dynasty founded by her billionaire father, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006. The 37-year-old Paetongtarn, a former business executive, becomes the third close member of the Shinawatra clan to take the prime minister’s job. Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra was Thailand’s first female prime minister from 2011 to 2014. An in-law also served briefly in 2008. Although Thaksin was a vastly popular politician who handily won three elections, Thailand’s royalist establishment was disturbed that his populist policies threatened the monarchy at the heart of Thai identity. Their hostility helped drive both him and Yingluck out of office and into exile.

Indonesia’s leader highlights economic and infrastructure developments in his final state of nation (AP) Indonesia’s outgoing President Joko Widodo highlighted advances in the economy and infrastructure during his final State of the Nation address Friday. Widodo said that in the 10 years he’s led the country, his administration controlled inflation, reduced rates of unemployment and extreme poverty, and built new infrastructure in parts of Indonesia that were difficult to reach and with limited resources. The Southeast Asian nation plays a crucial role in the economic and political dynamics of a region where global powers have been increasingly at odds over Taiwan, human rights issues, U.S. military presence, and Beijing’s assertive actions in contested areas like the South China Sea. With a population of about 275 million, Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy, and has the largest reserves of nickel in the world. Aiming to dominate the world’s nickel supply, the country has gone from having two nickel smelters to 27 over the last decade. In 2023, the country was responsible for more than half the supply of nickel ore globally.

Families of hostages in Gaza hope cease-fire talks will end their nightmare (AP) Some families of hostages held in Gaza believe the latest round of cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas could be the last best chance to set their loved ones free after more than 300 days of captivity. The families have advocated tirelessly to secure the release of their relatives, who were snatched on Oct. 7 during Hamas’ cross-border attack that started the war. Roughly 110 hostages remain in Gaza after about 100 were freed during a brief cease-fire in late November. Throughout the war, the families of hostages have pushed on with anguish and despair, rallying Israelis to their cause, lobbying local and foreign lawmakers, pleading that someone put an end to their nightmare. They’ve watched as multiple rounds of negotiations have crumbled. And they’ve increasingly directed their ire at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they accuse of prioritizing his political survival over the fate of their loved ones.

As Gaza death toll passes 40,000, corpses are buried in yards, streets, tiered graves (AP) Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa’di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead. “Sometimes we make graves on top of graves,” he said. Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new trenches or reopening existing ones. The dead can sometimes come from kilometers (miles) away, stretches of Gaza where burial grounds are destroyed or unreachable. The cemetery is 70 years old. A quarter of its graves are new. The death toll in Gaza since the beginning of the 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war has passed 40,000, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The small, densely populated strip of land is now packed with bodies. They fill morgues and overflow cemeteries. Families, fleeing repeatedly to escape offensives, bury their dead wherever possible: in backyards and parking lots, beneath staircases and along roadsides, according to witness accounts and video footage. Others lie under rubble, their families unsure they will ever be counted.

As the Middle East frets about conflict, Dubai booms with an influx of anxious wealth (AP) As conflict casts a shadow across the Middle East, people are getting rich in Dubai. The desert sheikdom’s economy is buzzing with tourism and construction as it positions itself as a safe haven in a region that’s resting on a knife’s edge following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. “Dubai is in a very unique position. We happen to be the net beneficiary of crisis in the region, for good or bad,” Zhann Jochinke, the chief operating officer of real estate consultancy Property Monitor, told The Associated Press. Dubai has a long history of indirectly benefiting from crises in the region. When the ultra-wealthy worry about turmoil, the city offers stability, low taxes and a friendly visa system. The current turmoil has situated Dubai to capitalize once again. Demand is running red hot in Dubai’s real estate market, catapulting glitzy properties to record-breaking valuations. Meanwhile, Dubai International Airport—the world’s busiest for international travel—saw a record 44.9 million travelers in the first half of this year.

She fought to become a midwife. Now she’s fighting to save mothers and their babies in South Sudan (AP) Elizabeth Nyachiew was 16 when she watched her neighbor bleed to death during childbirth. She vowed to become a midwife to spare others from the same fate in South Sudan, a country with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates. “If I saw people dying, I wanted to know why,” she said. “I kept thinking if I was educated, I’d know the cause and I could help.” Now 36, in her office at a hospital run by the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the city of Bentiu, Nyachiew said she has weathered civil war, hunger and displacement to make it this far. She is one of some 3,000 midwives in South Sudan. The country’s health ministry says that number is insufficient to serve the population of 11 million people.

London street cleaner wins dream vacation in a contest made just for him (Washington Post) When word got around that Paul Spiers, a street sweeper in the leafy South London suburb of Beckenham, was having trouble saving for a dream vacation to Portugal, the town’s residents rallied in a show of appreciation for their well-liked custodian and raised around $4,000 for his trip. But Spiers’s bosses wouldn’t let him take the money. Fundraisers were told that the contract between waste management company Veolia, Spiers’s employer, and the local council forbade Spiers from accepting money outside of his pay. On Tuesday, the story reached the desks of On the Beach, a British travel agency, where employees wondered: If Spiers couldn’t receive a gift, what if he was the lucky winner of a contest? On the Beach launched a one-of-a-kind vacation sweepstakes with a price tag suspiciously similar to the forbidden fundraiser—eligible only for a street cleaner in Beckenham named Spiers. Days later, the wily loophole delivered Spiers a voucher for his dream holiday, with his employer’s blessing. “I didn’t know I was appreciated,” Spiers said. “I thought I was coming here to do my job.”

#headlines #news

1 note · View note

disasterriskreductionday · 2 years ago

Text

A key instrument for flood risk management.

Flood risks affect almost 2 billion people worldwide. Climate change and unplanned urbanization will further increase these risks. The impacts on economies, communities, and people can be far reaching. In 2022, flooding in Pakistan killed more than 1700 people, affected 33 million, and caused damages and economic losses of over US$39 billion. In the same year, Nigeria and Australia were also hit by devastating flood events. To better manage these risks and build more resilient communities, detailed and accurate flood hazard and flood risk maps are essential.

Flood hazard maps identify areas affected by floods of different probabilities. They provide valuable information about the predicted flood depth and flow velocity. Flood risk maps, meanwhile, present the potential impact of floods on human health and life, economic activity and infrastructure, cultural heritage and the environment. The maps are a key instrument for integrated flood risk management. They are an important tool for raising awareness about areas at risk of flooding and for helping communities develop strategies for reducing these risks through structural and non-structural measures. Civil protection and first responders can use the maps to plan emergency response and the insurance industry refers to the maps and the underlying data to design flood insurance products. The maps are also essential for land-use planning and urban development to avoid creating new risks.

Modernizing Flood Mapping in Bulgaria and Romania in the context of the EU Floods Directive

Bulgaria and Romania are two countries that have taken a leap forward in modernizing their approaches to flood mapping. The World Bank supported both countries to update their national flood hazard and risk maps (FHRM) as part of the drive to implement the second cycle of the EU Floods Directive.

This Directive provides an overall framework for integrated flood risk management and requires EU Member States to (i) identify Areas of Potential Significant Flood Risk (APSFRs), (ii) assess in detail flood hazard and risk and prepare flood maps, and (iii) develop flood risk management plans with programs of measures to tackle the flood risk.

With the World Bank’s support, FHRMs have been developed for different sources of flooding including fluvial, pluvial, flash floods, coastal flooding for all identified APSFRs.

Image 1: The Bulgarian FHRM Web Portal.

Image 2: The Romanian FHRM Web Portal.

Development of Flood Hazard Maps

Developing accurate hazards maps requires vast amounts of input data ranging from spatial data (e.g., land-use, digital terrain models and cross sections of rivers), meteorological and hydrological data, as well information on the existing hydrotechnical infrastructure and their operational rules. This information feeds into hydrological and hydrodynamic models to simulate how flooding spreads across the landscape. Modeling is carried out for synthetic flood events with low, medium, and high probability, e.g., flood events that statistically occur once every 1000 years, once every 100 years and once every 10 or 20 years.

Both Romania and Bulgaria have invested heavily in improving the input data. In Romania, for example, new digital elevation models for an area of around 28,000km2 were produced using data from airborne LiDAR - a remote sensing method using planes to survey the elevation - and measurements from more than 33,000 river cross sections. In Bulgaria, aerial photogrammetry mapping carried out alongside field surveys to collect additional data related to river cross sections and hydraulic structures, produced new maps covering an area of over 2,500km2. Modeling was completed with sophisticated free and commercial software, mainly two-dimensional modeling with unsteady flow . In addition to the low, medium, and high return periods, both countries also examined a climate change scenario.

Development of Flood Risk Maps

To produce flood risk maps, information on the elements exposed to flooding is needed. This includes information about the population and their housing, social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, transport infrastructure, industrial sites, agricultural land, protected areas and other types of assets and natural elements. The flood risk maps use a qualitative approach to identify areas of low, medium or high risk. More detailed risk maps that use a quantitative approach present the potential risk in monetized damages per square meter. This detailed information is used to calculate the economics of various investments in flood risk management using cost-benefit and multicriteria analysis.

In Romania, orthophotos - aerial photographs or satellite imagery geometrically corrected such that the scale is uniform - of all APSFR were digitalized using innovative machine learning algorithms to identify and categorize all exposed elements. Floods can cause different degrees of damage for different categories of elements (residential buildings, social, economic, and cultural assets, transport infrastructure, farming land, etc.) depending on the water level. A relationship between the depths of the flooding and the damage was determined for each category and monetized for different sectors. Bulgaria followed a similar approach using an advanced geographic information system algorithm to perform risk analysis based on the results from the hydraulic modeling.

Using newly developed web viewers, the FHRMs were presented to key stakeholders for review and validation. After their approval, the maps were formally reported to the European Commission and published on the internet for all citizens. The new FHRMs are now being used in both countries to identify and prioritize non-structural and structural measures, ranging from nature-based solutions to various structural solutions to be integrated into new flood risk management plans.

The development of these maps is an important step forward in flood risk management for Bulgaria and Romania. Moreover, the flood mapping approaches developed here can serve as a model for other countries dealing with flood risks around the world.

#national flood hazard and risk maps (FHRM)#EU Floods Directive #world bank #flood risk management #flood risks #floods #Bulgaria #Romania #flood mapping

0 notes

shanneleighmacasukit · 4 years ago

Text

Amazing Architectural Projects of the World

There are some pretty amazing buildings being constructed around the world; some of them absolutely defy conventional human civil engineering wisdom and others challenge the laws of gravity. Every year seems to take the bar higher; pioneers of material sciences, civil engineering, landscaping, interior designing are taking design and architecture to a whole new level with unbelievably futuristic spaces for work, living and play.

Here’s your introduction to some of them.

Jeddah Tower (Kingdom tower), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

To be built to 1007 metres, the Jeddah Tower is set to be the first building on the plant to breach the kilometre mark! It will have more than 200 floors with the world’s highest observation deck on the 157 th floor (26 floors have already been built up). It will house office space, luxury condos, a Four Seasons hotel and an observatory and is slated for completion in 2019. It has 12 escalators and 59 elevators with 5 of the elevators being double-decker. The architectural style being used for the building is extremely unique featuring an aerodynamic 3-sided design to tackle wind-speeds and gravity. The tapering shape of the building also helps to maximize rentable and usable area. The core of the building is narrow at the top and large at the bottom of the building. The exterior walls are made of low-conductivity glass to reduce cooling loads. When complete, this project would be all set to take over from the Burj Khalifa as the defining tower in the Gulf.

Dubai Pearl, Dubai

Make no mistake about it; the Dubai Pearl is not your average high-rise. With 73 stories in 4 towers rising to 300 m, it’s a unique, mixed-use development with premium offices, residences, dining, retail, leisure and entertainment. Overlooking the Palm Jumeirah Island in the Dubai Technology and Media Zone, the Dubai Pearl is designed to provide residences for 29,000 people. There is a sky-bridge at the top connecting the 4 towers. The Dubai pearl sets new benchmarks in the Gulf for LEED-certified skyscrapers with 56% green space. It has features perfectly proportioned spaces with 51% space for branded residences, 12% for commercial space, 19% for retail and leisure and 18% for hospitality. This is one skyscraper with a difference for sure!

Agora Garden Tower, Taipei

The Agora Garden Tower is a 20-story luxury building that is eco-friendly in every sense imaginable with gardens on each floor. But wait, we haven’t even got to the piece de resistance – the brilliant design by Vincente Callebaut Architecte. Inspired by the double-helix shape of DNA, we are sure you would have seen nothing like it anywhere else. A shape that is twisting from bottom to top, the awe-inspiring design of this building makes jaws regularly drop in amazement, the building seemingly appearing to rotate 90 degrees along its profile as you move from bottom to top. The building is designed to be fully self-sufficient for energy with a couple of giant photovoltaic shades fitted at the top of the building. All the construction will be out of recycled and recyclable materials. The Agora Garden is setting new standards for brilliant design.

Dawang Mountain Resort, Changsha, China

Want never before seen design? How about resort built above an old rock quarry with a 200 feet waterfall rushing down? This project built to span two cliffs, combines an indoor ski slope, a water park and an ice world with a hotel, restaurants and shopping.

Istanbul New Airport

Istanbul is one of the biggest aviation hubs in a geographic region spreading across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The new Istanbul airport is projected to handle 150 million passengers every year and is set have a number of firsts. Located 22 miles from Istanbul on the Black sea coast, the airport will have 6 runways and is expected to serve 90 million passengers in a year when completed in 2028. Its duty-free area is set to be the biggest in the world at 53,000 square metres and more than 400 luxury brands under one roof; When the Phase1a of construction ends in 2018, the airport will have the largest terminal in the world (under one roof) with a floor area of almost 11 million square feet; It will also have Europe’s largest car park with 24,000 spaces along with a unique, tulip-shaped ATC tower. Terminal 1 is currently under construction and the use of a slatted, blue-reflecting roof and a vaulted ceiling combine to create a very exciting space inside Terminal 1. When complete, there is no doubt whatsoever it will be the number one airport in the world in every sense of the word.

Dubai One Tower

Next in the line of super-tall buildings being built in the Gulf, the Dubai One Tower will be the tallest residential tower in the world at 711 metres, when completed. To house 78000 residents, the tower will have 885 apartments, an indoor ski slope (you saw that right) and a marina. It will also have a hotel and a shopping centre inside. The indoor ski resort will be largest in the world with an unbelievable 1.2 km slope, believe it or not. The other funky part of the design is that the roof over the restaurants and cafes will be retractable for the cooler winter months. Dubai One will be the next trendsetter for residential high-rise buildings in the Gulf.

Forest City, Johor, Malaysia

Forest City is one of the biggest land reclamation projects in the world, seeking to build 4 new islands from 1400 hectares of reclaimed land in a bay between Malaysia and Singapore. The project is being executed by Country Garden Pacific View and is projected to house up to 700,000 residents after about 20 years of construction. Forest City is a work-live-play integrated zone designed to support about 220,000 jobs in finance, technology and bio-technology. The architectural plan for Forest City calls for the building of a green city with rainwater and storm-water harvesting, solar power, vertical growth and dense foliage. In additional to large park areas, mangrove swamps and a green corridor, an innovative design for a rooftop network of parks and gardens is also planned for (all of which would be interconnected). The Forest City is one development which exemplifies the advancement of sustainable building tech like no other.

Eko Atlantic City, Lagos, Nigeria

Eko Atlantic City is a pioneering development with the use of reclaimed land following in the steps of the likes of the Jumeirah. It seeks to build a new city off the coast of Lagos on 10 million square metres of reclamation. It will be a high-end live-work-play space with marinas and 250,000 units of prime housing when complete. The business district will be a landmark in itself and aspired to be the financial headquarters for Nigeria. The Eko Atlantic City is pioneering in the area of development in flood-prone regions in a time of global warming and rising sea levels. Believe it or now, there is an 8.5 km long wall being built around the development specifically to protect it from erosion and flooding. It is designed green in terms of water treatment and for low carbon footprints by the use of locally sourced material and environment friendly design. The Eko Atlantic city shows the way to the future in terms of the kind of development and design that would need to happen in coastal areas facing the threat of rising sea-levels.

Millennium Village, Tangerang, Indonesia

Millenium Village is a global smart city being promoted in Tangerang off the Jakarta-Merak Toll road. The singular selling point of this development is that office space is located across not one but three high-rises – the 75-story Gateway Tower, the 75-story Super Tower and the 100-story Iconic tower. The Iconic tower is truly an iconic building which will be the tallest building in Indonesia when complete. With colleges, hotels, an art district, a convention center, fine dining, a club, an art museum, a 470,000 square metre mall and a health city, the Millenium Village is truly a Millenium city, not just in name. With 125 hectares of green space set apart within 600 hectares of floor area, green living aspects are well taken care of. Not just that, the Millenium Sky Park sprawls across hold your breath, 25 hectares (yes, you read that right!) of gardens right in the middle of the city. The blend of high-rise living with green development is the hallmark of this project.

Khazar Islands project, Azerbaijan

The Khazar Islands project is a mega venture being developed on 41 artificial islands 25 kms from Baku, Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea (the furthest island is located 7 kms from shore). Development is planned to occur over 2000 hectares with high-rises in several islands and a truly audacious plan to have bridges to connect built-up areas. Once complete, the Khazar Islands are set to be the emblem of Azerbaijan’s development with the centrepiece of the project being the world’s tallest tower (at that time) – The Azerbaijan Tower. When completed, the islands are expected to feature eight hotels, a yacht club and amazing enough, even a Formula 1 racetrack and an airport! This development will be a trendsetter in the area of development on reclaimed land.

Photo & Description Credits: https://www.beautifullife.info

(For educational purposes only.)

2 notes · View notes

purplesurveys · 4 years ago

Text

1020

survey by lets-make-surveys

1 - What’s your average grocery bill for the week? How many people/animals does that have to feed? Could you cut it down if you had to? Around P10,000 every 1-2 weeks, which feeds five adults and two animals. I think it can definitely be cut down, considering a chunk of that bill comes from snacks or other fancy ingredients/condiments that we could technically do without.

2 - When was the last time you were woken up in the middle of the night? Two days ago, from the typhoon’s winds. It’s a good thing I woke up because my windows had been open through the night and they could’ve smashed against the pane and into a million pieces if the wind proceeded to push them.

3 - Have you done anything out of the ordinary so far today? I charged my phone through my dad’s car twice so I can stay aligned with what was going on at work today. I ended up having to file for an emergency leave (...four days into my role, how embarrassing) because the electricity didn’t come back until 4 PM today and because I was also unable to leave home to work in a coffee shop or mall with my village still submerged in flood for all of today – which meant I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with my tasks and meetings. It was so irritating to miss out on things and I felt really guilty for having to be absent less than a week into my new job. UGH. Better days, plz.

4 - How long is it until your birthday? Five months and a week exactly.

5 - Do you have a lot of debt? How long do you think it’ll take you to pay it all off? No debt.

6 - When was the last time you had to take time off work or school to attend an appointment? Last Thursday and Friday. I got my job offer last Wednesday and was expected to submit a mountain of requirements and government IDs before reporting for my first day this Monday, so I had no choice but to devote the whole of Thurs and Fri to completing those reqs.

7 - Do you get paid if you’re off sick from work? Do you think the number of sick days would change if you did or didn’t get paid? No. Not yet, at least.

8 - What colour was the last animal you saw? White with black eyes, nose, and pawprints.

9 - When’s your next payday? Do you have anything you need to buy when you get paid? Around a week and a half from now. I have to start buying Christmas presents, for sure.

10 - What kind of face mask do you prefer to use - re-usable or disposable? I don’t really have a preference but because my mom buys boxes of the disposable kind, it’s what I use.

11 - If someone told you five years ago, that you’d be living through a global pandemic, do you think you’d believe them? Absolutely the fuck not lmao. We were all so excited about 2020 and it being a new decade, and people even made a shit ton of memes about “20/20 vision” for years - there was no way anyone could’ve predicted a global pandemic, at least one of this scale.

12 - Is your state or country under any form of lockdown or “stay at home” order at the moment? Are you following the “rules” of that? People under the age of 21 are still prohibited from going out, as far as I know. But generally, the rules are a lot more loose now compared to the last few months. Everyone’s still required to wear face masks and face shields and practice social distancing while all public places have temperature checks, floor mats, and alcohol/hand sanitizers, of course; but it’s no longer out of the ordinary to hear of people going to the mall again or even dining out at restaurants. I follow the rules, because it’s really not too hard to keep myself and thus other people safe.

13 - What flavour were the last potato chips you ate? Sour cream and onion, but I didn’t like them. My parents got me salted egg flavored chips today though and I’m excited to open them :)

14 - If you have pets, do you let them sleep in or on your bed with you? Kimi never liked the bed, so he’s always slept under mine instead of beside me. Cooper’s a big ball of energy incapable of settling on a bed, and he needs to be in his crate to let him know it’s bedtime.

15 - Would you rather watch a sitcom, a reality show, or a documentary? I love all of these and I’m always open to watching any of them as long as I’m in the right mood for them. I don’t have a favorite and some days I’ll just be in a documentary mood, some days a reality TV mood, and other days a sitcom kind of mood.

16 - Do you have a favourite celebrity chef? Gordon Ramsay 100%. He’s entertaining across the board; his Hot Ones interview is my favorite, haha.

17 - When was the last time you did a load of laundry? Not in charge of that chore.

18 - Do you have anything interesting planned for tomorrow? What day is it tomorrow, anyway? Nah. I think I’ll have to do work tomorrow considering I had to go on leave today, which is okay. It’s nice to be busy on a weekend for once. Tomorrow is Saturday.

19 - Have you ever been in therapy or counselling? Did you find it useful? No but I’ve been considering it for a while, especially after the events of September lol. I do believe it will be useful and plenty helpful, yes, that’s why I’m finally warming up to the idea.

20 - What was the last film you watched? Is it one of your favourites? I didn’t finish it but I watched the first 20 minutes of a local movie called That Thing Called Tadhana. I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favorites, but it’s definitely a significant movie for me.

21 - Would you say you're an organised person? In what ways are you organised or disorganised? Eh, I’m right in the middle. I’m organized at work but I’m not super strict with myself when it comes to my personal space. Like if I’m able to keep my room organized it’s great, but if I’m unable to maintain it it’s not the end of the world. At work I like keeping my things color-coordinated and filed neatly in different folders or spreadsheets; at home I always seem to know where everything is, no matter how messy my space has gotten.

22 - Would you rather read a fantasy novel or an auto-biography? Autobiography, for sure.

23 - When was the last time someone paid for something for you? My parents bought groceries today.

24 - Do you have an open fire? If not, would you like one? I don’t know what this is. Is this a fireplace? Because if it is, we have no use for that here.

25 - What do you do with your old technology once you upgrade or get something new? Keep it around for emergencies, or hand it down to a sibling.

26 - If you were given the choice, would you solve a problem by speaking to someone on the phone, in person or via e-mail? Depends on who they are, tbh. The closer I am to someone, the more likely I am to take a more personal approach in handling an issue with them.

27 - Do you have an alarm set for tomorrow morning? What time do you need to get up? Nope, because it’s finally Saturday.

28 - What are you wearing at the moment? I’m wearing an old shirt from high school and a pair of shorts.

29 - Is there anyone else in the room with you? What are they doing right now? Just Kimi. Sleeping.

30 - Do people in real life know that you take surveys? If they don’t, is there a particular reason that you’ve never told them? Nah, there was never a reason to tell people...it just never comes up, really. Even if it ever does, it’d take too much explanation and I never feel like going through that, especially if they won’t be able to see what exactly I post anyway.

#survey #surveys

3 notes · View notes

berniesrevolution · 5 years ago

Link

Climate change is a global emergency.

The Amazon rainforest is burning, Greenland’s ice shelf is melting, and the Arctic is on fire. People across the country and the world are already experiencing the deadly consequences of our climate crisis, as extreme weather events like heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes upend entire communities, ecosystems, economies, and ways of life, as well as endanger millions of lives. Communities of color, working class people, and the global poor have borne and will bear this burden disproportionately.

The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations. As rising temperatures and extreme weather create health emergencies, drive land loss and displacement, destroy jobs, and threaten livelihoods, we must guarantee health care, housing, and a good-paying job to every American, especially to those who have been historically excluded from economic prosperity.

The scope of the challenge ahead of us shares similarities with the crisis faced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s. Battling a world war on two fronts—both in the East and the West—the United States came together, and within three short years restructured the entire economy in order to win the war and defeat fascism. As president, Bernie Sanders will boldly embrace the moral imperative of addressing the climate crisis and act immediately to mobilize millions of people across the country in support of the Green New Deal. From the Oval Office to the streets, Bernie will generate the political will necessary for a wholesale transformation of our society, with support for frontline and vulnerable communities and massive investments in sustainable energy, energy efficiency, and a transformation of our transportation system.

We need a president who has the courage, the vision, and the record to face down the greed of fossil fuel executives and the billionaire class who stand in the way of climate action. We need a president who welcomes their hatred. Bernie will lead our country to enact the Green New Deal and bring the world together to defeat the existential threat of climate change.

As President, Bernie Sanders Will Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million Jobs

As president, Bernie Sanders will launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy, from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond. This plan outlines some of the most significant goals we have set and steps we will take during this mobilization, including:

Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050 at latest – consistent with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals – by expanding the existing federal Power Marketing Administrations to build new solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources.

Ending unemployment by creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis. These jobs will be good paying, union jobs with strong benefits and safety standards in steel and auto manufacturing, construction, energy efficiency retrofitting, coding and server farms, and renewable power plants. We will also create millions of jobs in sustainable agriculture, engineering, a reimagined and expanded Civilian Conservation Corp, and preserving our public lands.

Directly invest an historic $16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts, in line with the mobilization of resources made during the New Deal and WWII, but with an explicit choice to include black, indigenous and other minority communities who were systematically excluded in the past.

A just transition for workers. This plan will prioritize the fossil fuel workers who have powered our economy for more than a century and who have too often been neglected by corporations and politicians. We will guarantee five years of a worker’s current salary, housing assistance, job training, health care, pension support, and priority job placement for any displaced worker, as well as early retirement support for those who choose it or can no longer work.

Declaring climate change a national emergency. We must take action to ensure a habitable planet for ourselves, for our children, and for our grandchildren. We will do whatever it takes to defeat the threat of climate change.

Saving American families money by weatherizing homes and lowering energy bills, building affordable and high-quality, modern public transportation, providing grants and trade-in programs for families and small businesses to purchase high-efficiency electric vehicles, and rebuilding our inefficient and crumbling infrastructure, including deploying universal, affordable high-speed internet.

Supporting small family farms by investing in ecologically regenerative and sustainable agriculture. This plan will transform our agricultural system to fight climate change, provide sustainable, local foods, and break the corporate stranglehold on farmers and ranchers.

Justice for frontline communities – especially under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly – to recover from, and prepare for, the climate impacts, including through a $40 billion Climate Justice Resiliency Fund. And providing those frontline and fenceline communities a just transition including real jobs, resilient infrastructure, economic development.

Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.

Meeting and exceeding our fair share of global emissions reductions. The United States has for over a century spewed carbon pollution emissions into the atmosphere in order to gain economic standing in the world. Therefore, we have an outsized obligation to help less industrialized nations meet their targets while improving quality of life. We will reduce domestic emissions by at least 71 percent by 2030 and reduce emissions among less industrialized nations by 36 percent by 2030 — the total equivalent of reducing our domestic emissions by 161 percent.

Making massive investments in research and development. We will invest in public research to drastically reduce the cost of energy storage, electric vehicles, and make our plastic more sustainable through advanced chemistry.

Expanding the climate justice movement. We will do this by coming together in a truly inclusive movement that prioritizes young people, workers, indigenous peoples, communities of color, and other historically marginalized groups to take on the fossil fuel industry and other polluters to push this over the finish line and lead the globe in solving the climate crisis.

Investing in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands. We will reauthorize and expand the Civilian Conservation Corps and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Corps to provide good paying jobs building green infrastructure.

This plan will pay for itself over 15 years. Experts have scored the plan and its economic effects. We will pay for the massive investment we need to reverse the climate crisis by:

Making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies.

Generating revenue from the wholesale of energy produced by the regional Power Marketing Authorities. Revenues will be collected from 2023-2035, and after 2035 electricity will be virtually free, aside from operations and maintenance costs.

Scaling back military spending on maintaining global oil dependence.

Collecting new income tax revenue from the 20 million new jobs created by the plan.

Reduced need for federal and state safety net spending due to the creation of millions of good-paying, unionized jobs.

Making the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.

The cost of inaction is unacceptable. Economists estimate that if we do not take action, we will lose $34.5 trillion in economic activity by the end of the century. And the benefits are enormous: by taking bold and decisive action, we will save $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over 30 years, and $70.4 trillion over 80 years.

We cannot accomplish any of these goals without taking on the fossil fuel billionaires whose greed lies at the very heart of the climate crisis. These executives have spent hundreds of millions of dollars protecting their profits at the expense of our future, and they will do whatever it takes to squeeze every last penny out of the Earth. Bernie promises to go further than any other presidential candidate in history to end the fossil fuel industry’s greed, including by making the industry pay for its pollution and prosecuting it for the damage it has caused.

And most importantly, we must build an unprecedented grassroots movement that is powerful enough to take them on, and win. Young people, advocates, tribes, cities and states all over this country have already begun this important work, and we will continue to follow their lead.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #bernie sanders #green new deal #progressive #progressive movement #democratic socialism #climate crisis #2020 election

68 notes · View notes

sciencenewsforstudents · 5 years ago

Link

KATHMANDU, Nepal — When mosquito season brought past dengue outbreaks to regions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Himalayan country was typically too chilly for the disease-carrying insects to live. But with climate change opening new paths for the viral disease, Nepal is now reeling from an unprecedented outbreak.

At least 9,000 people — from 65 of Nepal’s 77 districts — have been diagnosed with dengue since August, including six patients who have died, according to government health data.

“We have never had an outbreak like this before,” says Dr. Basu Dev Pandey, director of the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Diseases Hospital in the nation’s capital, Kathmandu. With dozens of people lined up for blood testing on September 26 at the nearby fever clinic, set up this year to handle the outbreak, Pandey continues: “People are afraid.”

Dengue is carried by the Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus mosquitoes, and has long been associated with warmer, low-lying tropical climates where the insects thrive. But for years, researchers have warned that dengue and other mosquito-borne illnesses would spread into new regions, as climate change brings warmer temperatures and alters rainfall patterns so that cooler regions become more hospitable for mosquitoes (SN: 9/15/11).

At the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kathmandu, the red and white “Fever Clinic” signs are new this year, as Nepal grapples with a dengue outbreak. CREDIT: GLORIA DICKIE

Nepal is proving to be a real-world example of this change. The country had its first-ever dengue outbreak in 2006, but only a handful of people were affected that year from lowland districts along the southern border with India.

“Climate change has created the conditions for the transmission of dengue at higher elevations,” says Meghnath Dhimal, chief research officer at the Nepal Health Research Council, a government agency based in Kathmandu. Atmospheric temperatures in the Himalayan Mountains have been increasing by an average of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. So across Nepal, there are increasingly more days each year that fall into the ideal temperature range for A. aegypti of 20° to 30° Celsius, Dhimal says. Areas like the capital are having fewer summer nights and days below 15° C, around where mosquitoes tend to stop feeding.

Nepal also saw its heaviest monsoon rainfall in a decade in July, with severe flooding reported across the country. Floods typically lead to the pooling of stagnant water, prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In recent years, the country started spraying insecticide to control mosquito populations in Kathmandu, which sits in a mountain valley about 1,400 meters above sea level.

The disease, which had caused severe outbreaks in only nine countries before 1970, is now endemic in more than 100 countries, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 390 million people worldwide get dengue infections every year, with about a quarter developing symptoms, researchers said in a 2013 paper in Nature.

Some of that spread is explained by urbanization as well as global travel and trade. But studies show that atmospheric temperatures are the most important drivers for dengue distribution and risk, followed by rainfall patterns, according to a 2016 review paper in Environmental Research.

With climate change, “warmer temperatures can affect both the mosquito and the virus,” says coauthor Kristie Ebi, a public health expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. A hotter climate helps mosquito larvae develop faster into adulthood, while also increasing the rate at which the dengue virus replicates within the mosquito, she says.

“There seems to be dengue outbreaks worldwide this year,” Ebi says. In August, for example, the Philippines declared a national emergency after dengue killed some 300 people and was suspected of sickening another 77,000 in the first 20 weeks of 2019 — almost double the number of cases reported during the same period the previous year in the Southeast Asian island nation.

And worldwide, it’s only going to get worse, according to a study published June 10 in Nature Microbiology. In that work, researchers built a map of global dengue distribution in 2015, and then predicted how climate change as well as socioeconomic and population trends would make new areas suitable for dengue transmission. By 2050, those areas would include cities in coastal China and Japan, southern Africa and the southeastern United States, epidemiologist Janey Messina at the University of Oxford and her colleagues find.

Similar trends also are expected — if not already seen — for other insect-driven viral diseases, including West Nile virus (SN: 11/28/18), chikungunya (SN: 6/2/15) and tick-borne Lyme disease (SN: 8/9/17).

Scientists have been working to develop a vaccine against dengue (SN: 6/15/16), but there is still no proven cure. Doctors can only ease symptoms that include headache, high fever, severe muscle pain, nausea and skin rash. Without treatment for symptoms, the disease can be deadly, killing roughly 20,000 people a year, according to WHO. Even with treatment, people are typically sick and unable to work for several weeks if not months.

#science #scied #sciblr #dengue #dengue fever #mosquitoes #mosquito-borne diseases #climate change #climate crisis

11 notes · View notes

jeremystrele · 5 years ago

Text

10 Unmissable Art Exhibitions Of 2020

Art

by Sally Tabart

Henri Matisse – ‘The sorrow of the king (La tristesse du roi)’ , 1952. gouache on paper, cut and pasted, mounted on canvas. Courtesy of AGNSW.

Henri Matisse – ‘Blue nude II (Nu bleu II)’ 1952. Courtesy of AGNSW.

Henri Matisse – ‘Decorative figure on an ornamental ground (Figure décorative sur fond ornemental)’, 1925. Courtesy of AGNSW.

Matisse: Life & Spirit November 2020 – March 2021 Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW

It’s no surprise that one of the most prestigious galleries in the country, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) will show a dynamic exhibition from one of the most famous and influential artists of all time, Henri Matisse.

Exclusive to AGNSW, Matisse: life & spirit, masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou will show over 100 works spanning six decades from the French master.

Developed alongside the Centre Pompidou in Paris, known for its unmatched collection of Matisse works, Matisse: life & spirit will be the greatest single exhibition of Matisse masterworks ever to be seen in Sydney. Yep – you’ll be able to see his famed cut-outs, but also his adventures in paintings, sculptures, and drawings, tracking the vast and varied exploration of his artistic career. This is TRULY unmissable!

Left to right: Dhuwarrwarr Marika Makassan, swords and long knives, Carlene Thompson, Kipara and Kalaya. Photo – courtesy of MAGNT.

Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) August 8th 2020 – January 31st 2021 Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, NT

Now in its 36th year, the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) is a major highlight for the Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory (MAGNT) in Darwin. This fantastic exhibition spotlights emerging and established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists across a varying range of mediums, and attracts more than 85,000 visitors.

This exhibition is so important for visitors to gain an insight into First Nations People’s perspective in both contemporary interpretations, as well as those steeped in generations of tradition. It also offers some prize money of up to $50,000 for winning artists, courtesy of longtime sponsor Telstra. All finalists’ work will be displayed in the world-class exhibition, opening in August.

Left: Mikala Dwyer: a shape of thought featuring The Angel; Possession; Sigil for Heaven and Earth by Mikala Dwyer, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2017. Photo – Mim Stirling. Right: Julia Robinson, Australia, 1981, Beatrice, 2019–20.

Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art February 29th – June 8th 2020 Art Gallery South Australia, SA

This year the Art Gallery of South Australia welcomes the hugely popular Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art back for its 30th year. Known for its risk-taking and expansive vision, the Biennial welcomes the wild, wacky, weird and wonderful.

The theme of the 2020 iteration is Monster Theatres, inviting artists to bring to life the ‘monsters’ of today. As described by curator Leigh Robb, ‘Monsters ask us to interrogate our relationships with each other, the environment and technology. They force us to question our empathy towards differences across race, gender, sexuality and spirituality.’

Artists involved in the Biennial include Abdul Abdullah, Polly Borland, Yhonnie Scarce + many more!

Olafur Eliasson, Riverbed 2014. Photo – Natasha Harth, QAGOMA.

Water December 7th 2019 – April 26th 2020 Gallery of Modern Art, QLD

Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art never fails to disappoint with its innovative, world-class programming – and Water is no exception! Exploring the theme of, you guessed it, Water, this exhibition explores this vital element from the perspective of artists around the world.

Here is some of what you can expect, according to GOMA:

‘Walk across a vast, rocky riverbed created by Olafur Eliasson. See animals from around the world gather together to drink from Cai Guo-Qiang’s brilliant blue waterhole. Gaze at Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s snowman frozen in Brisbane’s summer heat. Traverse a cloud of suspended gymnastic rings in a participatory artwork by William Forsythe. View the tidal currents rise and fall around Angela Tiatia. Reflect on the cultural traditions of bodies of water with Judy Watson, and on the long history of our reliance on water through Megan Cope’s re-created midden.’

Left to Right: Photo by Beth Wilkinson for Lindsay. Stanislava Pinchuk, ‘Topography : Topsoil Storage II, Fukushima Nuclear Exclusion Zone.’ Pin-holes on paper, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo – Matthew R. Stanton. Stanislava Pinchuk, ‘Topography : The Road to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant’. Pin-holes on paper, 2017. Photo – Matthew R. Stanton.

Stanislava Pinchuk June 27th – October 4th 2020 Heide Museum of Modern Art, VIC

Stanislava Pinchuk (also known by her pseudonym, Miso) has emerged as one of Australia’s intriguing contemporary artists in the last decade. The Ukranian-born, Melbourne-based artist captures the changing topographies of war and conflict zones through data mapping, making tiny, individual pin pricks to realise these patterns – an incredibly labour-intensive and mentally and physically draining process that appears effortless, and beautiful.

This major exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne will feature a survey of Stanislava’s most powerful pinprick projects from the past five years, accompanied by terrazzo-like sculptures comprised of pieces of debris left behind in conflict zones.

Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now May 30th – September 13th 2020 National Gallery of Australia, ACT

The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) celebrates its ongoing initiative to increase representation of artists who identify as women with Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now.

Drawing on works from the National Gallery’s own collection, as well as others from across Australia, Know My Name showcases the work of lesser-known artists alongside Australian greats from different times, places and cultures.

As part of the broader Know My Name initiative, a new commission by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers will be on display at the National Gallery. Patricia Piccinini’s iconic Skywhale (2013) will also see its new counterpart, Skywhalepapa (2020) ascend over Canberra on its maiden voyage, travelling alongside Skywhale eight times during the exhibition period.

Left: Pierre Bonnard – French 1867–1947 The dining room in the country, 1913. Right: India Mahdavi (designer). Jardin d’intérieur – collection for La Manufacture de Cogolin. Images courtesy of the NGV.

Pierre Bonnard designed by India Mahdavi June 5th – October 4th 2020 National Gallery of Victoria

While Sydney-siders enjoy the masterful works of Henri Matisse, Melbournites won’t miss out on the opportunity to experience an incredible exhibition of another beloved French painter! The exquisite works of Pierre Bonnard will be on show at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) for their major winter showcase, a kaleidoscopic exhibition of 150 works from the painter with a fondness for domestic scenes and rural life. Pierre Bonnard has been developed in partnership with Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

Described by Matisse, a close friend of Bonnard’s, as ‘a great painter, for today and definitely also for the future’, this groundbreaking exhibition spans paintings, drawings, photographs, folding screens and early cinema, depicting scenes of modern 20th century France in bright, vivid colours.

Aside from the opportunity to see one of the works of this beloved painter, what makes this exhibition absolutely unmissable is the design of the show itself. Iranian Paris-based designer India Mahdavi (the interiors genius behind the iconic pink Gallery at Sketch restaurant in London) has been commissioned by the NGV to bring Bonnard’s extraordinary works to life, elegantly balancing historical references with contemporary culture in an immersive experience.

22nd Biennale of Sydney, NIRIN November 8th 2020 – 16th February 2021 Various locations, NSW

First held in 1973 as part of the opening celebrations of the Sydney Opera House, the Biennale of Sydney is now in its 22nd year and is one of Australia’s blockbuster contemporary art events.

Taking place across six major sites – Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Cockatoo Island, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the National Art School – the Biennale of Sydney will see 94 artists from 47 countries

Under the guidance of multidisciplinary artist and this year’s Biennale Artistic Director Brook Andrew, the 12-week exhibition is titled NIRIN, meaning ‘edge’ in Brook’s mother’s Nation – the Wiradjuri people of western New South Wales. He says, ‘Optimism from chaos drives artists in NIRIN to resolve the often hidden or ignored urgency surrounding contemporary life.’

Carriageworks Commissions Rebecca Baumann: Radiant Flux, January 8th – June 14th Reko Rennie: REMEMBER ME, January 2020 – January 2021 Kate Mitchell: All Auras Touch, January 8th – March 1st Daniel Boyd: Video Works, January 8th – March 1st

Australia’s largest multi-arts centre, Carriageworks, has been home to some pretty major large-scale installation commissions in its time (who could forget German artist Katherina Grosse’s otherworldly technicoloured universe in 2018?). This summer, four new site-specific commissions from leading Australian artists Rebecca Baumann, Daniel Boyd, Kate Mitchell and Reko Rennie have taken residence in the epic historical space.

Spanning over 100-metres, Rebecca Baumann’s Radiant Flux sees every glass surface of the building’s exterior covered in a film that changes colour at every angle, flooding the space with kaleidoscopic light that will never be the same twice.

A study in human energy, All Aurus Touch by Kate Mitchell captures an aura portrait for each of the 1,023 census-recognised occupations.

Video Works by Kudjala/Gangalu artist Daniel Boyd features three major video installations, where gallery walls will be mapped with the artist’s otherworldly, infinite cosmos.

Interdisciplinary Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie references the massacre of First Nations people in Remember Me, a massive illuminated sign that will remain on display for the whole of 2020, the year marking the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first landfall.

Installation view of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2019 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Photo: AGNSW.

Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prizes May 9th – September 6th 2020 Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW

The Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prizes are some of the most prestigious and highly anticipated art events in the country. Since its inception in 1921, The Archibald Prize the most well-known of the three awards celebrates paintings of notable figures that reflect Australian culture across areas including art, media, entertainment, politics, sports and more. The works are always a great capsule to represent Australian culture of the moment.

Finalists for the Archibald (portrait), Wynne (landscape/scenery) and Sulman (genre/subject) are shown in an exhibition that starts at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and tours at select galleries around Australia for the remainder of the year.

1 note · View note

phroyd · 6 years ago

Link

The central part of the country, meanwhile, enjoyed some relief as a cold front moved steadily southward and eastward across the country, bringing down the temperatures. But the cooler weather settling in Monday and Tuesday is also bringing severe storms packed with powerful winds and heavy rains that have already caused damage in the Midwest. The National Weather Service warns flash flooding might be possible in some areas.

From the Carolinas to Maine, daytime highs reached the upper 90s Sunday. Coupled with high humidity, temperatures felt as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in places.

“There’s no point being out,” Washington, D.C., bus driver Ramieka Darby remarked while taking a quick break amid temperatures of nearly 100 degrees (37.8 Celsius).

Nearby, Jack Ogten was among a steady stream of tourists milling around outside the White House. Undeterred by the stifling heat, the resident of the Netherlands joked he’d lost about 22 pounds (10 kilograms) from sweating after just one day of sightseeing.

In New York City, where all eyes were on the power grid even before the hot weather following a Manhattan blackout last weekend, electricity company Con Ed reported scattered outages Sunday, the vast majority in the borough of Queens.

The city also directed office buildings to set thermostats no lower than 78 degrees (26 degrees Celsius) through Sunday to reduce strain on its electrical grid. A day earlier, a commemoration of the 1969 moon landing planned for Times Square and an outdoor festival featuring soccer star Megan Rapinoe and musician John Legend were nixed due to the heat.

In Boston, Sunday’s heat prompted cancellation of the annual Jimmy Fund 5K cancer benefit race as well as a popular Sunday market in the city’s South End. City officials also once again opened up city pools free to residents as the temperature topped 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) for the third consecutive day.

And police in one Boston suburb posted a tongue-in-cheek request on their Facebook page. “Due to the extreme heat, we are asking anyone thinking of doing criminal activity to hold off until Monday,” Braintree police wrote Friday. “Conducting criminal activity, in this extreme heat is next level henchmen status, and also very dangerous.”

In Pennsylvania, nine firefighters were treated for heat exhaustion and six transported to a hospital for treatment while fighting a house fire in sweltering conditions Saturday. Several hundred people were also evacuated from a retirement community Saturday because of a power outage that may have been heat-related.

In New Hampshire, rescue crews helped a 29-year-old hiker late Saturday after he was overcome by the heat in the White Mountain National Forest.

In New Jersey, the Oceanic Bridge over the Navesink River was closed Saturday evening after it got stuck open. Monmouth County officials say heat caused expansion of the metal encasing the drawbridge, which is a popular route for residents and beachgoers.

The heat even prompted Delaware officials to close Fort Delaware State Park, which served as a Union prison camp during the Civil War. Temperatures were simply too high for costumed interpreters who wear wool garb to work safely this weekend, officials said.

The National Weather Service reported high temperatures for July 20 were recorded Saturday at its weather stations in Atlantic City, New Jersey, New York City, Westfield, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Wallops Island, Virginia.

The heat relented early Sunday in the northern reaches of New England.

A Canadian cold front brought thunderstorms Saturday evening that dropped temperatures across northern Vermont and upstate New York. A heat advisory remained in effect for southern sections of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for much of the day, however.

And in many parts of the country, it’s not expected to get much better when the sun goes down: temperatures are expected to remain at or above the high 70s overnight (26 degrees Celsius).

Meanwhile, parts of the Midwest are dealing with the effects of damaging winds and rain that swooped in with the cold front that’s breaking up the heat wave.

In Milwaukee, utility crews restored power to more than 48,000 customers in the eastern part of the state. But around 56,000 customers were still without power Sunday after more than 700 wires, 50 power poles and over 600 trees or branches were taken down in thunderstorms, officials said.

In Michigan, power might not be restored for everyone until Tuesday.

Utility companies DTE Energy and Consumers Energy said roughly 500,000 customers are still without power after thousands of power lines were downed in a storm that was worst to hit the region since 2017.

___

Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Vermont, Mark Pratt in Boston, Deepti Hajela in New York, Ron Todt in New Jersey, Brian Witte in Maryland, and Kali Robinson in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Phroy

#climate change #heat #new england #nyc

10 notes · View notes

kevingeo333-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Water Management & the Netherlands: a study

In the fall of 2018, I studied abroad in the Netherlands and quickly fell in love with the vibrant culture and the friendly and entrepreneurial people. As I learned more about the nation’s history, I was fascinated by the age-long battle between the Dutch people and the sea. As the nation is mostly below sea level, the country’s engineers are familiar with the most advanced technology and best practices when it comes to water management and flood prevention. After all, 26% of the nation is below sea level (3) and over the centuries the Dutch have reclaimed more than 2,700 square miles of land from the sea (4). When I was presented with the opportunity to study a specific topic related to hazards, I immediately knew that I wanted to learn more about Dutch water engineering and how it has impacted the globe.

My research was aimed to answer one central question: How has the Netherlands used its water management expertise to mitigate both local and global natural disasters in the light of rising sea levels and climate change? As I began my research, I initially was interested in the historical relevance of water management in the Netherlands, but over time I realized that modern-day global collaborations between the Dutch and other nations was of much more interest to me. With that being said, I plan on first discussing how the Dutch people have demonstrated engineering excellence at home and then moving into global applications.

There is no clearer display of Dutch engineering expertise than Rotterdam, which is the financial capital of the Netherlands. A booming city of just over a million people, it contains the largest port in all of Europe and serves as a massive center of trade between the EU and the rest of the globe. The center of the city was almost completely destroyed during World War II, and engineers have played a large part in the city’s reconstruction over the last 75 years. Rotterdam is situated exactly at sea level and is home to the Maeslant storm surge barrier, which is the world’s biggest (1). The barrier itself consists of “a pair of steel lattices twice the size of the Eiffel Tower, lying down on either side of the channel connecting the Netherlands’ second-biggest city to the North Sea”. This barrier was built in the 1990s and can protect Rotterdam from a surge of up to 10 feet. This surge would only be present in the case of a one-in-10,000 year storm under current conditions, but the Dutch believe that climate change is likely to make storms of that magnitude more frequent in the near future. An engineer interviewed for the article about the barrier stated that estimates for flood damage “will be at least 700 billion euros. If you instead spend every year one billion euros, you spread the bill over 700 years. That’s, I think, the Dutch way” (1). I found this quote absolutely fascinating, as it not only represents my experience of the Dutch mentality extremely accurately but it also represents a stark contrast to the American mentality before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Levees in New Orleans were only designed to withstand a one-in-100 year storm and quickly failed under duress, leading to hundreds of million dollars of damage and hundreds of lives lost. This mindset was In addition to storm surge prevention, the Dutch have built a massive seawall to protect the entrance to Rotterdam’s port (1). Based on the worst-case scenario of sea-level rise from climate change (a foot of rise by 2060), this sea wall accounts for the changes we will experience over the next few decades and ensures that the Netherlands will be among the world’s most prepared countries when it comes to climate change.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, the Netherlands has decided that it is in everybody’s best interest to collaborate to tackle the issues surrounding rising sea levels and climate change. Their knowledge has been shared with countries around the globe, from elsewhere in Western Europe to North America and beyond. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana leaders sought out Dutch expertise as they attempted to rebuild New Orleans and mitigate disasters in the future. As a result of this collaboration, different neighborhoods across the city have storm resilience models that are adapted to their unique characteristics. This approach can be seen through the “Gentilly Resilience District”, which uses resilient design elements like water-permeable streets and sidewalks, medians between streets and former woodlands designed to function as stormwater holding facilities, and a recreation area that can hold over 38.000 cubic meters of stormwater (5). These measures will help New Orleans as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, and also mark a shift in the mindset of officials and citizens that led to the deeply painful impact of Hurricane Katrina. Instead of preparing for 100-year storms, the city is adopting a precautionary principle and sees the value in paying less upfront rather than paying more down the road, which I believe is to everybody’s benefit.

In addition to collaborations on infrastructure in Louisiana, the Dutch have shown their desire to collaborate heavily with California to advocate for overall sustainability. For instance, as the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles rapidly approach, seminars like “’Sustainable Cities, the Dutch Approach’” combine “Dutch experts and LA stakeholders in resiliency and smart mobility to exchange challenges, solutions, and expertise” (2). Although this does not directly tie into water management itself, the lessons that the Dutch learned in terms of contingency planning, flexibility, and budgeting in order to protect their cities will pay dividends as they’re shared with other nations in exchanges like these. In addition to the Sustainable Cities project, the Netherlands used lessons they learned from the “Room for the River” project, which was one of the biggest mitigation projects in the country, to help California manage issues they were facing managing water (6). My favorite part of this project was that although the Netherlands was worried about managing an abundance of water, California was worried about managing water scarcity. The two governments were able to share lessons and strategies in both situations and create to a mutually beneficial discussion, which I think is highly valuable.

Ultimately, the knowledge that the Dutch people have learned from their battle against water for the past few centuries has paid off both at home and abroad. Lessons regarding vulnerability, resilience, and contingency planning are incredibly important and can help resolve global issues as we plan to mitigate the effects of climate change. I admire the Dutch government for their willingness to share their expertise to improve disaster preparedness efforts around the globe, and I genuinely believe that they will be a key asset as my generation seeks to mitigate the disastrous effects of global climate change.

1. Bentley, C. (2015, September 1). As sea levels rise, Rotterdam floats to the top as an example of how to live with water. Retrieved from https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-20/sea-levels-rise-rotterdam-floats-top-example-how-love-water.

2. Beijersbergen, K., & Diebels, E. (2019, May 2). Holland Resiliency Week California: Making cities future proof. Embassy of the Netherlands. Retrieved from http://nlintheusa.com/holland-resiliency-week/.

3. Ireland, L. (2010, February 13). U.N. Climate Panel admits Dutch sea level flaw. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-seas/u-n-climate-panel-admits-dutch-sea-level-flaw-idUSTRE61C1V420100213

4. Wee, R. (2017, April 25). Countries With The Most Land Reclaimed From Seas & Wetlands. Retrieved from worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-reclaimed-land.html.

5. Iovenko, C. (2018, October 15). Dutch Masters: The Netherlands exports flood-control expertise. Retrieved from https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/dutch-masters-netherlands-exports-flood-control-expertise?fbclid=IwAR0_069_g5UqBecSig-GlvhBt3dhkKYtivfY4hqM0yNHl83Z10I4GHUVn4w.

6. Water Management: Embassy of the Netherlands. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://nlintheusa.com/water/.

1 note · View note

newstfionline · 9 months ago

Text

Monday, May 20, 2024

Accustomed to Disasters, Houston Didn’t See This One Coming (NYT) The storm that hurtled through Houston late Thursday surprised a city long accustomed to bouts of serious weather. The Astros kept playing baseball, even as rain and wind whipped into the team’s closed-dome stadium. Many people, following their evening routines, were caught unaware on bikes or at the gym. By Friday, all across town—but particularly in the dense and verdant inner loop neighborhoods that radiate from the city’s skyscrapers—Houstonians confronted a cityscape of debris left by winds of up to 100 mph, as strong as some of the hurricanes that have hit the city in recent years. Decades-old oak and pecan trees were ripped in two or knocked over at the roots, flattening fences or blocking roadways. Stop signs leaned at sharp angles. Highway billboards buckled. Residents spoke of horizontal rain and detritus swirling into the air, and wondered whether a tornado had passed through. “It was like we were in the middle of a blender,” said Martha Rosas.

Mexico City Has Long Thirsted for Water. The Crisis Is Worsening. (NYT) The groundwater is quickly vanishing. A key reservoir got so low that it is no longer used to supply water. Last year was Mexico’s hottest and driest in at least 70 years. And one of the city’s main water systems faces a potential “Day Zero” this summer when levels dip so much that it, too, will no longer provide water. Mexico City, once a water-rich valley that was drained to make way for a vast city, has a metropolitan population of 23 million, among the top 10 largest in the world and up from 15 million in 1990. It is one of several major cities facing severe water shortages, including Cape Town; São Paulo, Brazil; and Chennai, India. Many are the consequence of years of poor water management compounded by scarce rains. And while Mexico City’s problems are worsening, they are not new. Some neighborhoods have lacked adequate piped water for years, but today, communities that have never had shortages are suddenly facing them.

As killings surge, Haitians struggle to bury loved ones (AP) Dressed in black and white, the crowd of teenagers squeezed into a narrow street in Haiti’s capital carrying a coffin with their 16-year-old friend, Joseph, killed by a stray bullet during a gang attack. Finding closure for loved ones killed by gangs on a relentless rampage through Haiti’s capital and beyond is growing harder day by day in a country where burial rituals are sacred and the dead venerated. More than 2,500 people were killed or injured in just the first three months of the year, according to the United Nations. Victims of gang violence are increasingly left to decay on the street, prey to pigs and dogs, because a growing number of areas are too dangerous for people to go out and retrieve the bodies. Some bodies are never seen again, especially those of officers with Haiti’s National Police who are killed by gangs. Still, there are those like Joseph’s friends and family who brave the streets despite the danger of whizzing bullets so they can give their loved ones a proper burial.

Brazil sees aid measures from floods hitting its budget by at least $2.6 bln (Reuters) Brazil estimates aid measures taken by authorities after deadly floods in its southernmost state will cost at least 13.4 billion reais ($2.6 billion) from its budget, according to finance ministry data compiled by Reuters. Heavy rains, which have battered Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state since late April, caused historic floods that killed over 150 people, while nearly 100 residents are still missing and more than 500,000 have been displaced, official data shows.

Anger, anxiety, acrimony: Slovaks weigh what led to Fico shooting (Reuters) Slovak opposition party leader Michal Simecka, who described an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico this week as an attack on democracy, said on Friday that he, his wife and child had received death threats. His experience is not uncommon, a measure of the extreme political and personal animosities in Slovakia and across Europe that formed the backdrop to the shooting of Fico, who was still in intensive care, two days after being shot at close range. Slovaks like Lubos Oswald, a 41-year-old councillor in Handlova, Slovakia, where the shooting took place, felt a tragedy may have been in the making following years of deepening splits within the population and toxic political debate. “It can’t go on like this anymore: two neighbours hating each other for not having the same political opinions,” he told Reuters outside the shopping mall in the town where the assailant, a former security guard, fired five shots at Fico as he greeted supporters after an off-site cabinet meeting.

Russians Poured Over Ukraine’s Border. There Was Little to Stop Them. (NYT) Russian troops punched across Ukraine’s northern border with such speed and force last week that Ukraine’s meager fortifications offered almost no obstacle. Some Ukrainian soldiers, caught totally by surprise, fell back from their positions, and villages that had been liberated nearly two years earlier suddenly came under relentless shelling, forcing hundreds to flee in scenes reminiscent of the early days of the war. The stunning incursion into the Kharkiv Region lays bare the challenges facing Ukraine’s weary and thinly stretched forces as Russia ramps up its summer offensive. The Russian troops pouring over the border enjoyed a huge advantage in artillery shells and employed air power, including fighter jets and heavy glide bombs, to disastrous effect, unhindered by depleted Ukrainian air defenses. But the biggest challenge for Ukrainian forces is people. Ground down over more than two years of war, Ukraine’s military is struggling to come up with enough soldiers to effectively defend the 600-mile front line, even as Russian forces have swelled with thousands of newly mobilized troops.

Iran’s President Raisi and foreign minister die in a helicopter crash (AP) Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and others have been found dead at the site of a helicopter crash after an hourslong search through a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported. Raisi was 63. State TV gave no immediate cause for the crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. With Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

An airstrike kills 20 in central Gaza and fighting rages on (AP) An Israeli airstrike killed 20 people in central Gaza, mostly women and children, and fighting raged across the north on Sunday. The airstrike in Nuseirat, a built-up Palestinian refugee camp in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, killed 20 people, including eight women and four children, according to hospital records. Palestinians reported more airstrikes and heavy fighting in northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the World Food Program says a famine is underway. The Civil Defense says the strikes hit several homes near Kamal Adwan Hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya, killing at least 10 people. Footage released by the rescuers showed them trying to pull the body of a woman out of the rubble as explosions echo in the background and smoke rises.

Israel’s Wartime Government Frays as Frustration with Netanyahu Grows (NYT) Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an ultimatum on Saturday, saying he would leave the government if it did not soon develop a plan for the future of the war in Gaza. While Mr. Gantz’s departure would not topple the country’s emergency wartime government, the move would further strain a fragile coalition that has provided Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government with a boost of international legitimacy, and it would make the prime minister even more reliant on his hard-line partners. “If you choose the path of zealots, dragging the country into the abyss, we will be forced to leave the government,” Mr. Gantz said in a televised news conference. “We will turn to the people and build a government that will earn the people’s trust.” Mr. Gantz’s ultimatum was the latest sign of pressure building on Mr. Netanyahu to develop a postwar plan. The prime minister is increasingly being squeezed—externally from Israel’s closest ally, the United States, and from within his own War Cabinet—to clarify a strategy for Gaza.

DRC army says it stopped attempted coup involving US citizens (Reuters) The leader of an attempted coup on Sunday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been killed and some 50 people including three American citizens arrested, a spokesman for the Central African country's army told Reuters. Gunfire rang out around 4 a.m. in the capital Kinshasa, a Reuters reporter said. Armed men attacked the presidency in the city centre, according to spokesman Sylvain Ekenge. Another attack took place at the nearby home of Vital Kamerhe, a member of parliament who is tipped to become speaker, Kamerhe's spokesman, Michel Moto Muhima, and the Japanese ambassador said in posts on X. Ekenge named Christian Malanga, a U.S.-based Congolese politician, as the leader of the attempted coup. He said Malanga first attempted and aborted a coup in 2017 and that one of the American citizens arrested was Malanga's son.

Former South Africa leader Zuma promises jobs and free education as he launches party manifesto (AP) Former South African President Jacob Zuma Saturday lamented the high levels of poverty among black South Africans and promised to create jobs and tackle crime as he launched his new political party’s manifesto ahead of the country’s much anticipated elections. He told thousands of supporters who gathered at Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg that his party would build factories where many people would be employed and provide free education to the country’s youth. He has also pledged to change the country’s Constitution to restore more powers to traditional leaders, saying their role in society has been reduced by giving more powers to magistrates and judges. In 2018, Zuma was forced to resign as the country’s president following wide-ranging corruption allegations, but he has made a political return and is now seeking to become the country’s president again.

Working the 5-to-9 Before the 9-to-5 (WSJ) Melissa O’Blenis rises by 4:30 a.m. for prayer and Peloton time before starting her job at the digital consulting firm Argano. “I just love checking things off my list,” she says. “I need that focus time away from Teams messages, email notifications and text alerts.” A mother with two sets of twins, O’Blenis, 48, often breaks for her kids’ afternoon sports without feeling guilty or judged. Colleagues jokingly call her Granny because her 9 p.m. bedtime makes the early starts possible. But Granny got the last laugh when she was promoted to a director-level role in March. Other professionals take a similar approach to their desk jobs, starting their workdays with a 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift. They are up before the sun to get a jump on the workday. Workflow software maker Asana reports that 21.4% of users are logging on between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. this year, up from 19.8% in 2021. About 12% of work tasks are completed before 9 a.m., the company says.

#headlines #news

0 notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

Text

The 'fool' that fentanyl made into a millionaire

https://apnews.com/ce51cf7c958643629bce76764f71058d

This is a fascinating read 📖 looking at who stoked and helped create the Fentanyl Crisis that has taken so many lives. 😱 😭 😭 😭

The 'Fool ' That Fentanyl Made Into A Millionaire

By CLAIRE GALOFARO and LINDSAY WHITEHURST | Published September 14, 2019 10:20 AM ET | AP | Posted September 14, 2019 10:40 AM ET |

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The photo that flashed onto the courtroom screen showed a young man dead on his bedroom floor, bare feet poking from the cuffs of his rolled up jeans. Lurking on a trash can at the edge of the picture was what prosecutors said delivered this death: an ordinary, U.S. Postal Service envelope.

It had arrived with 10 round, blue pills inside, the markings of pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone stamped onto the surface. The young man took out two, crushed and snorted them. But the pills were poison, prosecutors said: counterfeits containing fatal grains of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that has written a deadly new chapter in the American opioid epidemic.

The envelope was postmarked from the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

That's where a clean-cut, 29-year-old college dropout and Eagle Scout named Aaron Shamo made himself a millionaire by building a fentanyl trafficking empire with not much more than his computer and the help of a few friends.

___

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

For three weeks this summer, those suburban millennials climbed onto the witness stand at his federal trial and offered an unprecedented window into how fentanyl bought and sold online has transformed the global drug trade. There was no testimony of underground tunnels or gangland murders or anything that a wall at the southern border might stop. Shamo called himself a "white-collar drug dealer," drew in co-workers from his time at eBay and peppered his messages to them with smiley-face emojis. His attorney called him a fool; his primary defense was that he isn't smart enough to be a kingpin.

How he and his friends managed to flood the country with a half-million fake oxycodone pills reveals the ease with which fentanyl now moves around the world, threatening to expand the epidemic beyond America's borders. It is so potent, so easy to transport, experts say, large-scale traffickers no longer require sophisticated networks to send it to any corner of the globe. All they need is a mailbox, internet access and people with an appetite for opioids. And consumption rates are rising from Asia to Europe to Latin America as pharmaceutical companies promote painkillers abroad.

The case against Shamo detailed how white powder up to 100 times stronger than morphine was bought online from a laboratory in China and arrived in Utah via international mail; it was shaped into perfect-looking replicas of oxycodone tablets in the press that thumped in Shamo's basement and resold on the internet's black markets. Then it was routed back into the postal system in thousands of packages addressed to homes across this country awash with prescription painkiller addiction.

When Shamo took the stand to try to spare himself a lifetime in prison, he began with a nervous chuckle. He careened from one topic to the next in a monologue prosecutors would later describe as masterful manipulation to convince the jury he thought his drug-dealing was helping people. Customers wrote thank you notes because their doctors refused to prescribe more painkillers, he said. It felt like "a win-win situation" — he got rich and his customers got drugs.

One of them was a struggling 21-year-old named Ruslan Klyuev who died in his bedroom in Daly City, California, the envelope from Utah at his feet. Shamo was charged in connection to that overdose alone, but when investigators scoured the list of customers they said they counted dozens more dead.

___

The question before this jury is being debated all across America: Two decades into the opioid epidemic, is there such a thing as justice for 400,000 lost lives?

The largest civil litigation in history is testing how the pharmaceutical industry should be held accountable for inundating the country with billions of addictive pain pills. Purdue Pharma, seen by many as the primary villain for deceptively pushing the blockbuster drug OxyContin, reached a tentative $12 billion settlement this week with about half the states and roughly 2,000 local governments. Attorneys general who didn't sign on say the figure is far too low. A trial of other pharmaceutical companies is scheduled for next month, in which communities will contend that their mass marketing of prescription painkillers sparked an epidemic.

This crisis began in the 1990s and has since has spiraled into waves, each worse than the one before: Prescription opioids spread addiction, then a crackdown on prescribing paved the road to heroin, which led to fentanyl — a synthetic opioid made entirely in a laboratory. Traffickers added it to heroin to boost its potency and profitability. That transition happened slowly at first, then with extraordinary ferocity.

By 2017, deaths from synthetic opioids had increased more than 800 percent, to 28,466, dragging the United States' overall life expectancy down for a third consecutive year for the first time in a century. Fentanyl deaths have been reported abroad, in Canada, Sweden, Estonia, the United Kingdom. Countries with surging prescription opioid addiction, like Australia, fear they are on the brink.

"Fentanyl will be the bubonic plague," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, warning that any country with a burgeoning prescription opioid problem could soon find itself following American footsteps. "It's just a matter of time."

No one can say exactly how or why fentanyl, first synthesized in 1959 as a powerful painkiller, entered the modern illicit drug market, said Bryce Pardo, a researcher at the Rand Corporation. In 2013, people began overdosing on heroin laced with fentanyl in New England and Ohio, and it spread from there. Shabbir Safdar, the Partnership for Safe Medicines' executive director, said the first known death from a fentanyl-laced pill was in San Francisco in October 2015.

It was a frightening development: The DEA estimates 3.4 million Americans misuse prescription painkillers, compared to 475,000 heroin users — meaning the pool potentially exposed is 10 times bigger.

There are two sources of supply. Mexican cartels and packages shipped direct from China, where it is produced in a huge and under-regulated chemical sector. A Senate investigation last year found massive quantities of fentanyl pouring in from China through the Postal Service. The report largely blamed dated technology that left customs inspectors sifting through packages manually looking for "the proverbial needle in a haystack." The Postal Service wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that it is working hard with its international counterparts to close those loopholes, and is improving its technology to intercept fentanyl shipments.

By the time a seized package heading from China to Utah led investigators to Shamo, he had already turned fentanyl into at least 458,946 potentially poisonous pills, the government said. There are many more like him, officials say, upstart traffickers pressing pure Chinese-made fentanyl into pills in their basements and kitchens with unsophisticated equipment. In a single batch, one pill might have no fentanyl and another enough to kill a person instantly. One agent at Shamo's trial compared it to making chocolate-chip cookies, only if too many chips ended up in a "cookie," whoever ate it dropped dead.

For traffickers, the profit margins are irresistible: The DEA estimates a kilogram of fentanyl synthesized for a few thousand dollars could make a dealer more than $1 million.

"Any moron can basically become a major drug kingpin by dealing in fentanyl," said Vigil. "You can have somebody with an IQ minus 100 who becomes an overnight multimillionaire."

___

Aaron Shamo dreamed of entrepreneurial riches. He idolized Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and studied self-improvement books like "Think and Grow Rich."

He and a longtime friend, Drew Crandall, worked at eBay after failed stints in college. But Crandall was fired and Shamo decided it was "unfair" that he still had to work, so he quit. They wanted easy money.

Shamo grew up in Phoenix with three older sisters. As a teenager, he started smoking pot and refusing to attend services with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His parents sent him to boarding school in Utah, where he earned his Eagle Scout badge. He later met Crandall through their shared love of longboarding and they moved in together. Crandall was awkward and shy; Shamo was charismatic, and prided himself on helping his friend talk to girls.

The pair concocted a plan to sell their Adderall, prescribed for attention deficit disorder, on the dark web — a wild, unregulated layer of the internet reached through a special browser. There are underground marketplaces there that mimic Amazon or eBay, where guns and drugs and pirated software are traded. Money is exchanged anonymously through cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

They learned what they needed on the web, searching with queries like "how to ship drugs." It was so easy. They expanded, ordering drugs in bulk, breaking them down and selling at a mark-up, all while barely having to leave the house.

They used the postal system like a drug mule, peddling the club drug MDMA, magic mushrooms, date rape drugs — they once bought a kilogram of cocaine from Peru. They recruited friends, offering them $100 to have parcels mailed to their homes, no questions asked.

But the profit margins were slim and their ambitions were greater: They bought a pill press, ordered the sedative alprazolam online from India and watched YouTube videos to figure out how to turn it into fake Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. Crandall, math minded, created the recipe. They mixed it up by shaking it in mason jars.

Then Crandall fell in love.

His new girlfriend grew suspicious when he would sneak away to package drugs. When she confronted him at a party, he tearfully confessed. She forgave him, if he promised to leave the business. They bought one-way tickets to New Zealand.

Then a local drug dealer made a suggestion to Shamo that would change the course of his life: There was a fortune to be made in producing fake oxycodone.

Shamo enlisted his gym buddy, Jonathan Luke Paz, to help him. Shamo ordered fentanyl online from China, set up the pill press in the basement and bought dyes and stamps to match popular pharmaceuticals. Then they handed them over to the local dealer, who tested them on his own customers. The first batches were weak or speckled in color, he told them, or didn't react like real oxycodone when users heated it on tinfoil to smoke it.

But they were getting better.

"Close to being money in the bank," the dealer messaged Shamo. "You did it, bro."

On the first day of 2016, Shamo he wrote out his goals for the upcoming year: He would be rich. All the girls would want him.

"I will overachieve," he wrote. "I will overcome."

He went online with his products a month later. Some were specified as fentanyl, but some weren't, purporting instead to contain 30 milligrams of oxycodone. Shamo named this new store Pharma-Master.

___

As winter turned to summer, sales skyrocketed. Pharma-Master started selling thousands of pills a week, charging around $10 each.

On June 6, a relatively small order came in: 10 pills, to be shipped to an apartment house in Daly City, a working-class suburb of San Francisco.

Like every order, it was sent in an encrypted email to two former eBay co-workers in charge of distribution. Alexandrya Tonge and Katherine Bustin counted out the pills in their suburban condo, packaged the shipments and dropped them in the mail.

The envelope arrived at the doorstep at 3 p.m. on June 11.

Under different circumstances, Shamo might have been friends with the 21-year-old man who lived there. Ruslan Klyuev, a Russian immigrant, was also an aspiring tech entrepreneur interested in the dark web. He had a baby face: rosy cheeks and curly hair. Klyuev loved to cook and would make extravagant meals for the house.

But his relationship ended, his web design business sputtered and he became estranged from his family, said Barry, a roommate who spoke on the condition that his last name not be published. His emotions toggled between sorrow and elation, and he struggled with substance abuse.

After drinking vodka, Klyuev crushed two of the pills with a battery and snorted the powder with a rolled-up sticky note, according to testimony. He started drifting in and out of sleep. He couldn't stand up.

He was found dead the next day, with fentanyl, alcohol and a substance associated with cocaine in his system.

His was the only death with which Shamo would be charged. His defense attorney, Greg Skordas, argued that neither his death nor any others can be definitely linked with Shamo's operation.

But in documents, prosecutors connected Shamo to a veritable slaughter:

A 24-year-old man in Seattle overdosed three weeks after he bought pills from Pharma-Master in March 2016.

Later that spring, 40 pills were shipped to a 21-year-old in Washington, D.C. He died in his dorm room 11 days later.

In Utah, a 29-year-old software analyst named Devin Meldrum had been searching since he was a teenager for a cure for cluster headaches that felt like knives stabbing his skull, said his father, Rod.

Doctors had prescribed opioids but limited the dosage, so he bought a backup supply from Pharma-Master. On Aug. 13, 2016, he ran out of pills days before his refill. As he got ready for bed, he texted his fiance and took a pill from his reserve for the first time, his father said.

He was dead before she arrived to say goodnight, blue on his bathroom floor.

His father isn't sure Shamo even now understands the magnitude of what happened: "Does he even comprehend how many families have had their hearts torn out?"

___

Online, Pharma-Master was getting rave reviews.

"These will make u a millionaire in under a year, guarantee," wrote one shopper who called himself "Trustworthy Money."

He was a dealer in Portland named Jared Gillespie. He bought 80,000 pills from Pharma-Master, according to documents filed against Gillespie in Oregon. He knew he was buying fentanyl pills, the Oregon prosecutors alleged, but the people buying from him had no way to know that. They are unknown and uncounted.

Shamo offered steep discounts for bulk buyers. Tonge, one of his distributors, testified that she began to question Shamo's claim that he was helping patients who couldn't get medication: Why would one person need 5,000 pills?

Her vacuum cleaner would become a critical piece of evidence. Its dust bin was filled with pills. The operation had grown so frantic, pumping out tens of thousands of tablets a month, that when they spilled onto the floor, they weren't worth saving.

Tonge and her partner complained that the orders were coming too quickly, so Shamo hired a "runner" named Sean Gygi to pick up the packages and drop them in the mail, dozens of them a day.

Drug manufacturing became routine: Shamo once wrote himself a to-do list, and included a reminder to "make blues," the street name for oxycodone, along with getting a haircut, washing his sheets, cleaning the kitchen. And Shamo planned to expand. He bought another press so big agents would later need a tow truck to drag it out of his garage.

The money was pouring in, and out.

Shamo hired a personal assistant; she did his shopping, had his car detailed. He stuffed a duffel bag with $429,000 cash and asked his parents to hold it. He bragged to friends about VIP bottle service at clubs and gambling in Las Vegas. He shopped for real estate in Puerto Rico; took photos sipping champagne on a cruise ship; bought designer jeans, an 88-inch television, a boat and BMW.

Crandall and his girlfriend posted photos on Instagram of trips to Laos, Thailand, Singapore, kayaking and partying. But he was running out of money and agreed to become a remote customer service representative. The list of people accepting packages from China ballooned to more than a dozen. Everyone was making easy money and getting text messages from Shamo dotted with "lol" and "awesome!"

Shamo penned another note: "I am Shamo. I am awesome. My friends love me. I created an empire."

But even as he cheered himself on, there were signs of danger.

One customer reported an overdose death. Shamo scanned obituaries, then declared it was a faked, Crandall said. Then a message said pills were making people sick.

Crandall forwarded it to Shamo with a dismissive question: Should he tell them to "suck it up?" Or send more pills to pacify them?

___

They didn't know it, but a suspicious customs agent at the Los Angeles International Airport had flagged a box from Shanghai, China, pulled it off the belt and looked inside. The agent found 98.7 grams of fentanyl powder — enough to make almost 100,000 pills. The box was destined for Utah.

Agents looked for more packages making their way from China to Utah, and eventually one arrived, said an agent with Homeland Security Investigations who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect ongoing investigations. On Nov. 8, 2016, postal inspectors seized a box en route from a port city in China known to law enforcement as a fentanyl-trafficking hub. It was addressed to Sean Gygi, Shamo's "runner," so agents arrived at his house with a search warrant.

Gygi said he thought the hundreds of envelopes he'd put in the mail contained the party drugs he sometimes took himself. Told it was fentanyl, the agent recalled, Gygi drooped.

He agreed to wear a wire while he picked up the packages, like he did every day. But instead of dropping them in the mail, he delivered them to police.

This single day's shipment contained 34,828 fentanyl pills destined for homes in 26 states.

Four days later, on Nov. 22, 2016, agents stood on Shamo's stoop, shouted through a bullhorn, then broke the door down with a battering ram. They were dressed in neon-orange hazmat suits with clear bowls around their faces that made them look like astronauts.

Shamo came up the stairs in a T-shirt and shorts, a mask and gloves in his pocket. A pill press downstairs was running, in a room with powder caked on the walls and the furniture.

Others were raiding the stash at Bustin and Tonge's condo. Veteran vice officers would say they had never seen so many pills, even in international operations. In total, they packed up over 74,000 fentanyl pills awaiting distribution.

In Shamo's sock drawer, agents found stack after stack of cash. There was more money in a safe in the closet. Agents totaled up more than $1.2 million, not including the money he had tied up in Bitcoin or bags he'd stashed with his family. Investigators eventually caught up with Paz, who Shamo paid around a dollar per pill, and he surrendered $800,000 more.

Crandall was in Laos, still traveling with his girlfriend, when he heard the news. He stored his drug-related data on a flash drive, threw it down a storm drain and sent an email to the dark web marketplace: "This account has been compromised." After a few months, he figured he was in the clear. He and his girlfriend planned their wedding and invited guests to meet them in Hawaii for the big day: May 12, 2017. They bought rings, and a dress.

Agents were waiting when they stepped onto American soil in Honolulu.

___

When Crandall sat on the witness stand, he was slump-shouldered and shackled, clumsily trying to maneuver his handcuffs to pull a tissue out of the box to wipe his eyes. In the two years since his arrest, he has been imprisoned in a county jail and watched his fellow inmates suffer the brutal fallout of an opioid epidemic. They stole from their parents, cycled in and out of jail and shivered, sweated, sobbed through withdrawal.

He'd helped feed this, he realized. For money.

He and Shamo's other ex-partners and packagers pleaded guilty, agreed to testify against their friend and hoped for mercy.

The story they told convinced the jury to convict Shamo of 12 counts, including continuing criminal enterprise, the so-called "kingpin charge" that is typically reserved for drug lords like El Chapo and carries a mandatory life sentence. The jury deadlocked, though on the 13th count: the death of Klyuev.

The bust was one of the largest operations in the country in 2016. But the fentanyl trade has only grown more sophisticated since. By comparison, Shamo now looks "small-time," said Safdar, with the Partnership for Safe Medicines. The most notorious Mexican drug cartels have transitioned to fentanyl, even as homegrown upstarts like Shamo's proliferate.

Seizure data in the United Nation's World Drug Report shows trafficking quickly expanding worldwide. In 2013, four countries reported fentanyl seizures. By 2016: 12 countries. In 2017, 16 countries reported seizing fentanyl.

And there is no reason to believe it will not spread further. In Africa and the Middle East, the synthetic opioid tramadol is widely abused, much of it illicitly manufactured in Asia. If that market transitions to fentanyl it would be catastrophic, said Scott Stewart, a former agent with the State Department. In Australia, prescription opioid consumption has quadrupled. Marianne Jauncey, medical director of a Sydney harm-reduction center, can't think of any reason fentanyl won't soon arrive — all they can do is prepare for the day that it does.

As Shamo was convicted, a single dark web marketplace still had 32,000 listings for drugs, thousands of them claiming to be oxycodone. There was no way to tell whether they originated in a pharmacy or somebody's basement.

One vendor even borrowed a version of Shamo's name. Pharmamaster peddles oxys online, sold in bulk at a discount. It has, it boasts, an "unlimited" supply.

"Pharma-grade A++," the listings promise. "24-hour shipping!"

1 note · View note

usnatarchives · 6 years ago

Video

tumblr

“We collect everything” AOTUS Featured on White House Historical Association Podcast

Washington, August 15, 2018 — This month, leaders from presidential sites and libraries across the country as well as presidential descendants will convene in Washington for the Presidential Sites Summit. To celebrate this historic meeting, the White House Historical Association has released the latest episode of The 1600 Sessions podcast: “Preserving Presidential History”, exploring the role of the National Archives and the Archivist of the United States in the collection and preservation of presidential records and objects.

In this fascinating discussion, White House Historical Association President Stewart McLaurin speaks with David S. Ferriero, the 10th and current Archivist of the United States, about his oversight of the National Archives, which collects and preserves presidential history in the nation’s capital and across the country where items are housed in various presidential libraries.

Ferriero outlines the origin and purpose of the National Archives, which has collected and preserved records of the United States since 1934: “It wasn't until the Franklin Roosevelt administration that this country got serious about its records… Roosevelt, who I'm convinced was a closet archivist himself…signed the legislation in 1934 that created the National Archives. He also hired the first archivist, Robert Connor.” Ferriero describes difficulties Connor had as he was wandering around town and trying to figure out where the records were and discovered that they were stored in attics and basements and subject to fire, theft and floods.

McLaurin and Ferriero also reflect on the organized system of presidential libraries and their relationship with the National Archives, unique to the United States: “We're often visited by archivists and other folks and foreign governments to learn about the presidential library system…there have been attempts to model what we have but I don't believe any country has created legislation that mandates the collection of presidential papers by its government.” McLaurin notes the importance of accessibility to these records for scholars, students, researchers, and journalists. From August 27-30, representatives from presidential libraries will gather in Washington for the Presidential Sites Summit, hosted by the White House Historical Association, to discuss topics such as the digitization of records, the importance of education and philanthropy, and presidential history through memory.

Ferriero also discusses the National Archives and its successful system for engaging and teaching students in Washington and across the country: “I'm especially pleased and interested to see the work that goes on in those presidential libraries that are on campuses…there's great opportunities for collaboration with faculty and students and with policy centers.” At home in Washington, he has found an innovative way to engage young historians: “When I became the archivist and walked into that [Archives] rotunda I said ‘Aha! There it is. Sleep over right here on the floor of this rotunda’… And twice a year we now have in October and February, about 100 kids with an adult who spend the night with us. They come on a Saturday night and we have a whole evening's worth of activities for them - scavenger hunt, readings, film, all kinds of activities.”

When asked about the scope of digitizing the records of modern presidents, Ferriero gives a startling perspective: “We started collecting e-mail during the Reagan administration, so between Reagan and Bush 41, about 2.5 million e-mail messages, 20 million from the Clinton White House, 210 million from Bush 43, and 300 million from the Obama administration. So that tells you the direction that we are headed. And that also tells you what keeps me up at night in terms of being able to manage large electronic files and ensure that they are going to be available in perpetuity.”

As the National Archives tackles 21st century recordkeeping, continues its involvement with presidential libraries and universities across the nation, and inspires future generations of Americans to connect with past presidents, the mission of the National Archives remains the same – to ensure that records and history are maintained, preserved, and made available forever.

#AOTUS #History #Archives #Records #PresidentialLibrary

62 notes · View notes

ierm-institute · 2 years ago

Link

0 notes

gogreenarmy · 6 years ago

Text

“Hurricanes, floods and infrastructure failure”

Chapter 4 of Don’t Get Stuck On Stupid!, a book by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore’ (U.S. Army-Retired)

“There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.” – Will Rogers

One of the big issues facing us in the late 20th century was the so-called Y2K problem, which was the potential for computers to go haywire when their calendars moved from 1999 to 2000. Computer codes were originally written with the year as a two-digit number, leaving off the initial “19.” As the year 2000 approached, experts worried that computers would think “00” was 1900 instead of 2000 and would therefore crash because the date would be off by 100 years.

The fear was that computers running banks, airlines, and even governments would cease to function and that widespread chaos would take over. Nuclear weapons would launch by themselves, ATMs would randomly spit out $20 bills, the stock market would crash, airplanes would drop out of the sky and governments would fail!

I was in Washington at this time, and we were working on the Y2K issue. I spent December 31, 1999, at the Pentagon, watching for signs of trouble around the world. We had forward deployed troops all over the world in strategic sites, and they were ready to go. We had practiced all of the drills to protect Washington, D.C., because we didn’t know what would happen.

Just like everyone else, we did a lot of work to protect all our computers and to make sure nothing happened with our nuclear arsenal. The solution, however, was fairly simple: change the year code to a four-digit number – but with so many computers and so much data, there was a possibility of missing something.

As it turned out, nothing happened, but it showed us how vulnerable we were to infrastructure failures – and that responding to a crisis takes much more effort, time and money than simply planning ahead.

A changing climate requires changing ideas

Other than Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the terrorist attacks in 2001, never before in our country’s history have we faced a crisis at home that is as immediate and important as the one we face today from our crumbling and badly managed infrastructure.

But it wasn’t the Russians or a terrorist network

that did this to us. We did it to ourselves by ignoring the warning signs and not making adequate preparations.

This crisis has been known about for many years, but it really became evident in the summer of 2017 when the triple hurricanes of Harvey, Irma and

Maria hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, respectively. Every day for several weeks on end, we turned on our televisions and checked the Internet for updates on the disasters that were unfolding in several major metropolitan areas and across the entire island of Puerto Rico.

Even after disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it’s frustrating to think that planning on the ground still hasn’t been implemented to avert disasters of this nature. This is something we are very capable of doing – just like we have done to improve hurricane tracking. We might be able to predict with a new level of accuracy where a hurricane may strike, but in general we are not using technology and scientific research nearly enough to help our people. It’s possible to use these resources so much better, but politics and various vested interests have taken precedence over the well-being of our country.

We are at a critical point in history – not just for our national security, but for our health and safety and the future of our country. That’s why it’s important to take a different approach, because we can’t depend only on the professionals and the politicians to make things better. In many instances, they haven’t even addressed the issues in earnest. Someone needs to raise the distress flag.

If our people aren’t safe, our country is vulnerable. The only one who can save us is us.

One of the greatest issues we face is that weather patterns are changing. This severely affects the way in which our houses, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our entire nation have to deal with such dramatic and immediate changes. This is not just a societal issue, it is a national security issue.

The weather and infrastructure may seem like separate issues, but they’re well connected. If our roads and railroads, for example, are not adequate in times of emergency, large sections of the population will be in even greater danger from the floods and hurricanes that we know will be coming.

Something needs to be done to defenseless areas to mitigate problems caused by severe weather events; many of these problems were exposed by Hurricanes Harvey in Texas and Maria in Puerto Rico.

An egregious example of how we have created our own problems is that we have allowed developers to build entire neighborhoods in known floodplains – in Houston, Texas, for example. About 90 percent of all natural disasters in the United States involve flooding, so most insurers no longer offer flood insurance because it is not profitable. As a result, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was introduced in 1968 to provide flood insurance to communities that otherwise might not be able to purchase such insurance.

The majority of the NFIP’s 5.5 million policyholders are in Texas and Florida, the very states that were pummeled by hurricanes in 2017 and two of the states that are most vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels. Before these hurricanes, the NFIP was already over $24 billion in debt, due in part to bad management and ill-conceived policies.

The NFIP debt is taxpayer money, so we’re subsidizing people to build in areas that we know will flood and will need to be bailed out. That’s crazy! In fact, just one percent of insured properties account for up to 30 percent of the claims and represent more than half the $24 billion debt, meaning that some properties flood multiple times and are constantly rebuilt, with our government knowing they will flood again.

More than 30,000 properties flood an average of five times every two to three years, and some properties have flooded more than 30 times. One home valued at $69,000 in California flooded 34 times in 32 years. Yet, after every flood, the NFIP rebuilt the property, spending nearly 10 times the property’s value.

What’s more, the average home that’s flooded has a value of about $110,000 but suffers over $133,000 in flood damages – and many of these homes are rebuilt multiple times. A significant number of these homes are also vacation homes, meaning that money to help rebuild primary homes for the less wealthy is potentially being diverted. It would often be less expensive to purchase a new home in a different location than to keep rebuilding in the same location.

We know the dangers and the expenses of living in flood zones, but little is done to help people move out of them. Apart from the insane policy of rebuilding over and over again, less than two percent of the money spent on rebuilding is spent on helping people move to safer locations. Unlike a nation such as the Netherlands – much of which is below sea level but which has not experienced a major flood since 1953 – we spend more money responding to floods than preventing them.

To make matters worse – or better, if you’re covered by NFIP – is the fact that the insurance policies don’t increase in price, even after multiple claims for the same property. When efforts are made to increase the rates, there is a huge cry from those whose premiums would increase because they rebuild so often. Meanwhile, we the taxpayers are footing the bill and literally encouraging people to build and rebuild in places that are not sustainable for housing.

After a disaster, many people are clueless about how to rebuild. How many more disasters will we have to go through before things are done right?

One of the issues we see in storms such as Hurricane Harvey is how to manage storm water. There is a normal function of the landscape and the way it deals with things such as excessive water, but that understanding has disappeared along with the natural landscapes that help the land deal with storm water.

The landscape is a huge mechanism for absorbing and purifying rainwater. Under normal circumstances, regular rains help cool the atmosphere; at the same time, the rain is soaked into the ground, where it is naturally filtered and becomes safe to drink. What we’ve done over the years is that we’ve changed this mechanism so that it is no longer functioning as it should.

Storms are ways of equalizing heat in the atmosphere, and one reason we get these huge storms now is the concentration of hot air and hot water. That’s what fed the storms in Texas and Florida in 2017. The atmosphere is heating up due to the reduced amount of plant material, which increases the moisture drawn into the air and therefore the amount of water that is dropped as rain. It’s a vicious cycle.

The energy in the atmosphere also plays a major role. The jet stream usually goes west to east in a fairly predictable pattern, but now it is waving up and down, more than likely due to man’s influence on the atmosphere. When the jet stream goes above or around a storm, it no longer pushes it. This is contributing to more extreme weather and making the extreme weather last longer.

One of the things that rain does is slow the wind, so with more rain we can expect slower-moving storms. We have already seen the effects of storms that sit for longer periods instead of moving along like they used to do. The floods in south Louisiana in 2016 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017 are examples of this new trend in storms.

Forests are one of the planet’s biggest cooling mechanisms, but we have replaced great swaths of forest with lawns. The lawn is now the single largest “crop” in the United States. More lawn is grown in our country than corn or any commercial crop, and in total it covers an area about the size of Texas.

The proliferation of lawns comes at a great cost, however. It takes a tremendous amount of water to keep grass alive, and in some regions as much as 75 percent of residential water is devoted to lawns. Naturally, this puts a colossal strain on water systems. The typical lawn uses 10,000 gallons of water per year, in addition to rainwater.

Unlike trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, lawns emit considerable amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to the warming of the atmosphere.

The greatest harm a lawn does, however, is as a result of their being treated with chemicals. After World War II, the chemical companies led us to believe that the best lawns were bright green, weed-free and insect-free, instead of being natural.

Each year, we dump about 90 million pounds of herbicides and pesticides on our lawns, with the result that many of these chemicals are now found in groundwater. Nitrates leeching into the drinking water can have the effect, as seen in some states such as Iowa, of turning babies grey-blue (the Blue Baby Syndrome).

What all this chemical action does is alter the nature of lawns. In a natural, organic lawn or forest floor, you could have four or five inches of rain with no runoff because the water is absorbed. A chemical lawn is denser and less able to absorb water, because the chemicals undermine the biology of the soil. It becomes saturated after only an inch of rain, and the rest runs off.

In a heavy rain, a typical sewer system can usually handle only a couple of inches of rain. After that, the landscape starts to flood. In an era when we are facing heavier and more sustained rainfalls, it makes sense to return to lawns that are organic and that can handle large amounts of water – or, better yet, replace lawns with other vegetation that is not harmful to the environment.

Another issue is trees. Tree roots are being starved by lawns, again because the rain is not being absorbed adequately into the ground. Instead of lawns around trees, it’s best to use other types of plant materials or no plants at all, like our grandparents used to do. Every person that owns property has the ability to contribute to the revival of healthy lawns and healthy trees, with the ultimate goal of being able to deal with storm water.

Insurance companies don’t like people to have trees near their houses, because trees have a habit of falling on houses in storms. However, trees almost always fall because of bad management, not because of wind and rain. Trees are valuable, because they cool the environment, provide shade that cools houses, and break the wind. Rather than getting rid of trees, we need to understand how to maintain our trees to encourage healthy soil and healthy roots.

Infrastructure is the foundation of our society

South of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at Cairo, Illinois, there are just five railroad bridges crossing the Mississippi River. Known as the Lower Mississippi, this is a stretch of about 1,000 miles.

One of the reasons there are so few railroad crossings in the Lower Mississippi is that about 90 percent of all railroad freight traffic across the nation – both east-west and north-south – passes through Chicago, in the North. This makes the entire nation’s railroad freight system vulnerable to a crippling weather event such as a snowstorm.

Chicago is known for its extreme winter weather, and the blizzards of 1967 and 1999 are particularly memorable. In 1999, a blizzard virtually shut down freight traffic across the nation for several weeks. Because each railroad company is privately owned and operates its own lines, they didn’t coordinate their snow plowing and they were on the verge of shutting down the nation’s freight system. Fortunately, the railroad companies worked out a solution by allowing train cars from one company to go from one railroad line to another.

That was an infrastructure challenge, and it was solved because people realized there was a problem and they fixed it. It didn’t address the crazy situation in which 90 percent of railroad freight traffic goes through a single hub, but it was a start.

The railroads are still all privately owned, but the roads and airports across the nation are owned by various governmental entities, so we have this matrix of transportation infrastructure that is a patchwork of business and governmental bodies. And this can sometimes be a huge mess.

This is just one piece of the infrastructure jigsaw puzzle that keeps our nation running, but if any part of it fails, it could have a devastating and cumulative effect. In any community, the citizens can point to crumbling bridges, roads that are inadequate for the amount of traffic, sewer systems that need to be upgraded, school systems with inadequate facilities and so much more. As our infrastructure ages, the need to upgrade and replace it increases – and so does the cost.

Infrastructure is the foundation of our society. Without roads, bridges, schools, power plants, hospitals, communication systems and so on, our quality of life would plummet and we would become a third-world country.

Politicians tend to want to take the easy way out. Often, this means ignoring the problem and leaving it for the next administration or proposing privatization for parts of the infrastructure. The United States, through Federal, State and local governments, spends about 2.4 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on infrastructure per year, which is much less than many other developed countries.

China, on the other hand, spends about nine percent. In dollar terms, it spends more on infrastructure annually than North America and Western Europe combined. China, like many other nations such as Germany and Japan, looks to long-term goals. Meanwhile, the U.S. generally has shifted away from long-term goals to short-term fixes.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower understood that solid infrastructure is a military weapon. One of the major rationales he used in support of the interstate highway system was that it would facilitate the efficient movement of troops and military equipment across long distances.

Today, one of the easy political solutions to failing infrastructure is to propose privatizing large parts of it, most notably roads and bridges. Private companies alone are unable to finance the huge costs of these infrastructure projects, so they are granted massive tax breaks and are allowed to collect user fees such as tolls to offset their expenses.

This may work for some high-traffic spots in major metropolitan areas, but it will never work for rural roads and bridges that see relatively little traffic but are equally essential to the livelihood of the local population. The other issue is that the roads and bridges are still built with taxpayer money (in the form of grants and tax breaks), yet the taxpayers are charged tolls to use the very things they have already paid for.

Overall, transportation needs to be looked at more closely, and we need a variety of options so that if one part of the system breaks down, there is a backup. Currently, there is no backup, which is why one small failure in the highway system, for example, can cause weeks or months of disruption. Thus, a major blizzard has the potential to cripple cross-country rail networks.

‘Houston, we have a problem’

The situation in Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 was the “perfect storm” of infrastructure failures, environmental mismanagement and changing weather patterns. It was as much a man-made disaster as was Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans 12 years earlier.

One of the biggest issues in Houston was the lack of zoning and building codes, which are essential components for urban growth. Houston is the fourth-largest city in the U.S. in terms of population and the third-largest in area. More than 2.3 million people are spread out over more than 630 square miles.

Most cities have stringent building requirements. In San Francisco, which has a high population density because the city is confined to a small area, there are higher standards for buildings due to the threat of earthquakes. In addition, they don’t build where there could be floods, and residential and business areas are strictly separated.

In Houston, much of the city was built in known floodplains. Houston was planned by developers, apparently with little thought given to how the various communities would deal with the inevitable floodwaters. Houston is a concrete jungle that floods regularly: The first major flood was in 1935, and since 1994 it has flooded several times. There was a 100-year flood in 1994, a 500-year flood in 2001, and devastating floods in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The 2017 flood was the worst, of course. With so much of the land paved over, with so many lawns unable to absorb more than an inch or so of rain and with Hurricane Harvey being bigger and slower than previous storms, there was simply nowhere for the water to go.

To make matters worse, the lack of building regulations meant that not only were thousands of homes built in floodplains, but when there was a plan to deal with excess rainwater it often involved simply moving that water to the next community via pipes, ditches, and so on. This total lack of infrastructure planning made the environmental disaster worse than it should have been – and completely predictable.

It’s not just Houston, of course, although we know that many of the problems faced by Houston could have been averted or lessened with sensible and proper planning.

Just weeks after Harvey hit Texas, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, severely damaging the island’s fragile infrastructure and knocking out power to almost the entire population of about 3.5 million people.

Instead of doing all in his power, as quickly as possible, to help millions of American citizens who were without electricity and were running dangerously low of drinking water and food, President Trump belittled the island’s elected officials, calling them “politically motivated ingrates” who “want everything done for them.”

The inadequate Federal response in Puerto Rico was all too familiar. I had seen it before in 2005 in New Orleans – and here we were a dozen years later and we were still stuck on stupid.

Overall, we’re facing a national crisis that could affect 60 million people in low-lying and coastal areas. As a nation, we have no plan to protect those people. There is no Federal agency for planning a response. And the Trump administration is making matters worse by denying there is a problem, refusing to accept the scientific evidence.

One way to be better prepared for future hurricanes is to enlist the aid of the U.S. military – a “Ready Brigade,” a quick-response Task Force that could move in immediately after the storm has passed.

This Task Force would be made up of Army, Navy and/or Marines. It could be drawn from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, or the 101st Airborne Division, or the 10th Mountain Division.

The first of the military personnel could be on the ground in a matter of hours, assessing the damage, saving lives, helping people in distress. Such an operation would involve perhaps 15 to 20 ships, 100 helicopters, and a brigade of soldiers, including some who would parachute into the heart of the affected area.

I think Congress should authorize the funding in the Defense Department budget that would enable such a Task Force to be our nation’s first responders

for disasters involving hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.

Now, the Task Force wouldn’t take the place of the various State National Guards and other first responder groups that have been at it for decades. It would supplement what’s already being done, and it would do so with extraordinary speed, the likes of which the world has never seen!

It would be easy to slip backwards into being a third world country. We planned our metropolitan areas to be densely populated, but we haven’t put enough thought into how to support that population in times of crisis.

How do they evacuate?

How do they survive if the railroads fail or if the electricity supply fails?

How do they deal with floodwaters?

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 was a learning experience. Mistakes were made, but there was no precedent. Katrina became the precedent and was the starting point for how to deal with future disasters. Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico incorporated some of the lessons, but neglected others.

The compromised infrastructure across the United States is a serious threat to national security, and it’s made worse by changing weather patterns and cities springing up where they perhaps don’t belong.

We have vested interests in keeping the status quo, but the status quo is rarely favorable to the population at large. Human nature never changes, and those with power don’t want to relinquish it. Unless we learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it – and the failure to learn from Hurricane Katrina is already having serious implication for our ability to deal with today’s monster storms.

What we have to understand is that the price tag to keep Americans safe isn’t the main issue. Look at the amount of money we spend on overseas wars and defense contracts. If we spent just a fraction of that on being prepared for disasters at home, we would be better able to take care of our own people.

The fact that we are failing in our duty to protect our own people is not just stupid, it’s shameful and grossly negligent – but completely reversible if we can muster up the will to address these issues.

Calls to action

Accept the reality of changing weather patterns, and plan accordingly.

Build sustainable houses and rebuild in safe places, not in floodplains.

Don’t use chemicals on your lawns.

Help trees work with the environment, not against it.

Devote time and effort to building a strong infrastructure.

Don’t keep making the same mistakes … don’t get stuck on stupid!

1 note · View note