The author thinks that natural disasters are getting worse because he doesn’t know history – or (apparently) how to use Google news searches. Natural disasters claim far fewer lives now than they did one hundred years ago.
For those of us wedded to the idea of human development, we try to draw lessons from the catastrophes we manage to live through. One lesson we need to learn is that the impact of natural disasters will continue to grow. When I was a teenager back in the ancient 1960’s, there were about three billion people on Earth. In New York City this past Sunday March 13, 2011 at 11:15 AM , the World Population Clock estimated there were 6,878,805,516 people on the planet. Starting in 2007 the majority of those people lived in cities, and many of us live along coasts and in other places that put us in the pathway of probable natural disaster. If human history tells us anything, that will not change, and as our population grows to a probable peak of ten billion, it will only get worse. It is not that we will see more natural disasters; it is that our human population and built-up settlements are increasingly vulnerable to them.
Steve,
I certainly agree with you that these types of stories often ignore history and make it seem as if current natural disasters are unusual.
However your continually posting disasters with huge death tolls has less to do with the severity of the disaster than with living conditions when the disaster occurred. I think it likely that if this earthquake and tsunami had happened 100 years ago it Japan it would have killed numbers similar to the vast numbers you have reported in other places and times. You should keep in mind that we have telephones and TV, and cars and building codes and evil socialist health care systems that limit the human toll in ways that were not available back then.
They had twenty seconds to react to the earthquake warning and few minutes to react to the tsunami warning. Try evacuating Los Angeles in fifteen minutes.
The article says:
“The destruction is massive and the loss of life is beyond comprehension”
Like Steve said, given historical disasters, the loss of life these days is well within comprehension. Apparently the Puff is having memory problems.
The deadliest US earthquake was in 1906, deadliest hurricane was in 1900, deadliest flood was in 1889, deadliest tornado was in 1925. So that does not seem to indicate that disasters are getting worse.
In 1953 there were 3 US tornados that each killed over 90 people. There has not been a single tornado to kill 90 or more people since 1953.
The measurements Charted are for a death toll of above 100 or more people killed. what is not included in this chart are high magnitude shocks where there are no deaths, or deaths under 100 people.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOv45euGxU&w=480&h=390%5D
Name: Richter Scale: Estimated Deaths: Year:
Antioch,Syria 250,000 526
Corinth, Greece 45,000 856
Shensi province, china 830,000 1556
Catania, Italy 60,000 1693
Calcutta, India 300,000 1737
Lisbon, Portugal 60,000 1755
Calabria, Italy 50,000 1783
San Francisco 8.3 452 1906
Messina, Italy 7.5 83,000 1908
Avezzano,Italy 7.5 29,980 1915
Gansu, China 8.6 100,000 1920
Tokyo 8.3 140,000 1923
Nan-Shan, China 8.3 200,000 1927
Gansu, China 7.6 70,000 1932
Quetta, India 7.5 30,000 1935
Erzincan, Turkey 7.9 30,000 1939
Chillan, Chile 8.3 28,000 1939
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan 7.3 110,000 1948
Assam, India 8.7 1,526 1950
Agadir, Morocco 5.8 12,000 1960
Chile 9.5 1,500 1960
Anchorage, Alaska 9.2 131 1964
Ancash, Peru 7.7 66,794 1970
Managua, Nicaragua 6.5 7.000 1971
Guatemala City 7.5 23.000 1976
Tangshan, China 8.2 242.000 1976
NE Iran 7.7 25,000 1978
El Asnam, Algeria 7.3 20,000 1980
Mexico City 8.1 25,000 1985
Armenia 6.9 25,000 1988
San Francisco 7.1 300 1989
Roudhon NW Iran 7.7 50,000 1990
Philippines 7.7 1,600 1990
Latur, India 6.5 9,748 1993
kobe, Japan 7.2 5,000 1995
Neftegorsk, Russia 7.5 1,989 1995
NE Iran 7.1 4,000 1997
Takhar, Afghanistan 6.1 2,323 1998
Afghanistan 6.9 4,700 1998
Turkey 7.8 15,000 1999
Taiwan 7.6 2,474 1999
El Salvador 6.6 400 2000
El Salvador 7.7 5,000 2001
Gujarat, India 7.7 20,103 2001
SW Iran 6.6 40,000 2003
Morocco 6.5 564 2004
Indian Ocean 9.2 150.000 2004
Pakistan 7.6 74.500 2005
Haiti 7.0 150,000 2010
The planet is not overcrowded, as the Cohen says, it just seems that way to him. There’s all kinds of space. I’m sure it seems overcrowded to people living in cities like NY and humans congregate in such places mostly because of economic reasons.
Libs and enviros think there’s just enough of them and too many of us. That’s what they mean by overpopulation.
I spent some time tonight looking around the internet about Earths population, these are the official best estimates I could find, these figures are not the low estimated figures!
Asia 3.8 billion – 3,879,000,000
Africa 1 billion – 1,000,010,000
Europe 731 million – 731,000,000
North America 514 million – 528,720,588
South America 371 million – 385,742,554
Australia 21 million – 21,874,900
population of six continents 4,982,600,000 – 5,546,338,042
Unless there are 1,2 or even 3 billion people living on Antarctica the World population crock is extremely inaccurate and any reporter quoting what figure is displayed on these freaking things; needs to have their head examined.
The world population clock is flawed, there are various versions of the equation being interpreted by dubious programs all over the web, using the same equation I worked out at what rate of natural Death would be the limit over [x] amount of years.
A Death Rate: of 153,884 per day over 120 years 6,573,924,480
A Death Rate: of 153,884 per day over 100 years 5,478,270,400
A Death Rate: of 153,884 per day over 80 years 4,382,616,320
(The [LOG] for the equation actually shows a decline in population where as the population crock programs so an unreasonable increase in population since 1998 )
Show*
Here’s the formula for the world crock and an example of the type of program/script used.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base.
Growth rates are calculated using the formula:
r(t) = ln [ P(t+1) / P(t) ]
where:
t = year
r(t) = growth rate from midyear t to midyear t+1
P(t) = population at midyear t
ln = natural log
function counter() {
popstat=5946422755;
poprate=2.4452;
today=new Date()
statsdate = new Date(“February 1, 1999”);
offset = today.getTimezoneOffset()*60*1000
diffpop = (( today.getTime() + offset ) – statsdate.getTime() ) / 1000
var newpop = Math.ceil(popstat + (diffpop * poprate));
newpop = “” + newpop;
p1 = newpop.substring(0,1)
p2 = newpop.substring(1,4)
p3 = newpop.substring(4,7)
p4 = newpop.substring(7,10)
var pops= p1 + “,” + p2 + “,” + p3 + “,” + p4;
var popul = document.getElementById(“poo”);
popul.innerHTML = pops;
setTimeout(‘counter()’,200);
}