Super Typhoon Haiyan is leveling the Phillippines

Super Typhoon Haiyan as seen by composite image courtesy of Japan’s & Europe’s Meteorological services from geostationary orbit on 7 Nov 2013 UTC 13:00. Click image for more awesome pics & info at Bad Astronomy.

Update: Reported via the NOAA, “the US’ National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had issued a bulletin saying that the storm’s intensity could no longer be tracked using the widely-used Dvorak storm intensity scale.” If it were to be rated, guesses are from strong cat 6 to cat 7.

This is just the beginning of what some climate researchers say may be in our collective future. Super-storms, hyper-canes, some inevitably hitting densely populated regions, taking out vast sections of our interconnected, interdependent global economy: [Read more…]

Look who’s asking for a Big Gubmint handout now

paypal_logo

It turns out I’m not the only one asking for money this week. Remember Super Storm Sandy? Which wasn’t a super storm so much as a typical strength hurricane that happened to hit the densest population center in the US, including a bunch of well to do beach fronts. Back then, a number of conservative lawmakers, teabaggers to the core or afraid of same, voted against relief for that disaster. Courtesy of a link posted in comments, you already know what’s coming next, don’t you? [Read more…]

Did climate change cause Sandy?

Satellite image of Superstorm Sandy taken at 10 AM EDT Tuesday. Image NASA GSFC. Click for info at Climate Progress.

Did Sandy happen because of global climate change? Answer: It’s quite possible according to one of the world’s leading climate science experts, Dr. Michael Mann from Penn Sate University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From The Front Lines: [Read more…]

FTB reader/regular on what blood means to the Red Cross

^^DONATE TO STORM VICTIMS^^

Short at the beginning of the month? Bood donations to the Red Cross are your proxy for cash, they turn it into money to help victims of disasters like Sandy. And one FTB regular reminds us that blood means way more for some people:

About a decade ago my young daughter came down with a rare condition that could be treated with a blood product that required 6000 pints of blood… She recovered. If you’ve ever given blood, thank you. You may well have contributed to my daughter’s recovery. Before that event, I was lackadasical about donating blood regularly. I haven’t missed an opportunity since then. I’m O+. I do “double reds” every 112 days. I need to live another 910 years before I will have replaced those 6000 donations.

I’m not sure what an act of God is, but this has to be close

^^DONATE TO STORM VICTIMS, CLICK HERE^^

I just donated part of my monthly FTB pay to the link above, you’re hereby invited to join in, add 0.01 to a whole dollar ammount if you want them to know it came through a blog. … So, after all the ugly lies about how some deadly event is somehow a God-ly harbinger of whatever conservative cause the right-wing nut job du jure happens to be spewing that day, finally, mere days before a momentous election, a freak hurricane-blizzard-storm strikes that peels back the facade built to disguise the dangers of anthropogenic climate change and the unusual cruelty of a government harnessed by the ultra rich solely for widening the luxurious gap they already enjoy from us riff-raff, all in one fail swoop. You can argue about whether or not a rape is a specific, planned divine event, but I’m pretty sure a hurricane would have to be, if the terms “Act” and “God” have any literal meaning.

Do you really want to know how Smarmy Team Romney reacted to this tragedy? [Read more…]

It’s a super storm!

Yes Virginia, this is exactly the kind of weird weather pattern that could be both a product of climate change, and a mere appetizer for what will come later this century. The flooding and winds were mostly moderate by disaster standards, but they were moderate over a huge region. Storm damage is a product not just of severity, it’s also directly related to population i.e., infrastructure. Plucky east coast residents are crawling, bailing and shoveling out now: [Read more…]