The Staggering After-Effects of Volcanoes

Two hundred years ago the most powerful eruption in modern history made itself felt around the world. It could happen again at almost any time

IF ALIENS had been watching the Earth during 1815 the chances are they would not have noticed the cannon fire of Waterloo, let alone the final decisions of the Congress of Vienna or the birth of Otto von Bismarck. Such things loom larger in history books than they do in astronomical observations. What they might have noticed instead was that, as the year went on, the planet in their telescopes began to reflect a little more sunlight. And if their eyes or instruments had been sensitive to the infrared, as well as to visible light, the curious aliens would have noticed that as the planet brightened, its surface cooled.

Mount Tambora (pictured), a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, was once similar in stature to Mont Blanc or Mount Rainier. But in April 1815 it blew its top off in spectacular fashion. On the 10th and 11th it sent molten rock more than 40 kilometres into the sky in the most powerful eruption of the past 500 years. The umbrella of ash spread out over a million square kilometres; in its shadow day was as night. Billions of tonnes of dust, gas, rock and ash scoured the mountain’s flanks in pyroclastic flows, hitting the surrounding sea hard enough to set off deadly tsunamis; the wave that hit eastern Java, 500km away, two hours later was still two metres high when it did so. The dying mountain’s roar was heard 2,000km away. Ships saw floating islands of pumice in the surrounding seas for years.

In his book “Eruptions that Shook the World”, Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at Cambridge University, puts the number killed by the ash flows, the tsunamis and the starvation that followed them in Indonesia at 60,000-120,000. That alone would make Tambora’s eruption the deadliest on record. But the eruption did not restrict its impact to the areas pummelled by waves and smothered by ash.

When the sulphur hits the stratosphere
The year after the eruption clothes froze to washing lines in the New England summer and glaciers surged down Alpine valleys at an alarming rate. Countless thousands starved in China’s Yunnan province and typhus spread across Europe. Grain was in such short supply in Britain that the Corn Laws were suspended and a poetic coterie succumbing to cabin fever on the shores of Lake Geneva dreamed up nightmares that would haunt the imagination for centuries to come. And no one knew that the common cause of all these things was a ruined mountain in a far-off sea.

While lesser eruptions since then have had measurable effects on the climate across the planet, none has been large enough to disrupt lives to anything like the same worldwide extent. It may be that no eruption ever does so again. But if that turns out to be the case, it will be because the human world has changed, not because volcanoes have. The future will undoubtedly see eruptions as large as Tambora, and a good bit larger still.

Mixed in with the 30 cubic kilometres or more of rock spewed out from Tambora’s crater were more than 50m tonnes of sulphur dioxide, a large fraction of which rose up with the ash cloud into the stratosphere. While most of the ash fell back quite quickly, the sulphur dioxide stayed up and spread both around the equator and towards the poles. Over the following months it oxidised to form sulphate ions, which developed into tiny particles that reflected away some of the light coming from the sun. Because less sunlight was reaching the surface, the Earth began to cool down.

The sulphate particles were small enough to stay aloft for many months, so the cooling continued into the following year. By the summer of 1816 the world was on average about 1ºC cooler than it had been the year before—an average which hides much larger regional effects. Because the continents are quicker to cool than the heat-storing seas are, land temperatures dropped almost twice as much as the global average.

This cooling dried the planet out. A cooler surface meant less evaporation, which meant less water vapour in the lower atmosphere and thus less rain. Rainfall over the planet as a whole was down by between 3.6% and 4% in 1816.

If such numbers seem suspiciously accurate, considering that most of the world of 1816 was devoid of thermometers and rain gauges, it is because they come from recent computer modelling of the climate that seeks to mimic the conditions Tambora created. Like all modelling results, such numbers need caveats. These results, though, and similar ones from other models, can be accorded the credence that comes from having been proved right in similar situations.

The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines was about a sixth as large as Tambora’s in terms of the volume of lava, rock and ash, and about a third as large in terms of sulphur emissions. Satellites showed that in the summer of 1992 the sulphur it had spewed into the atmosphere was reducing the amount of sunlight getting to the Earth’s surface by well over three watts per square metre; for comparison, the warming effect of the 40% increase in the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide level since the age of Tambora is just two watts per square metre.

With the energy absorbed by the Earth reduced, temperatures fell by around half a degree in the year after Pinatubo; rainfall dropped off significantly, too. Computer models run after the eruption but before these effects became visible captured the effects reasonably accurately (though they had a tendency to overestimate the cooling). This is one of the best reasons for thinking that such models capture the workings of the climate quite well.

The historical record largely bears out what the models suggest Tambora did. Across Europe the summer of 1816 was cold and wet, and the harvest terrible. The effects were most notable around the Alps; in Saint Gallen, in Switzerland, the price of grain more than quadrupled between 1815 and 1817. Starving migrants took to the roads in their hundreds of thousands; mortality rates climbed due to starvation and disease. Death also stalked Yunnan, where Tambora’s cooling shut down the monsoon and cold days in summer killed the rice harvest for three years running.

Monsoons, which are driven by the difference in temperature between hot land and cooler sea, are particularly vulnerable to the excessive cooling of the land that volcanoes bring. Their weakening can have effects on more than crops. In his excellent account of the global impacts of the 1815 eruption, “Tambora”, Gillen D’Arcy Wood of the University of Illinois draws on the writings of James Jameson, a doctor in Calcutta, who held the lack of fresh water which followed the failure of the 1816 monsoon responsible for the cholera epidemic that swept through Bengal the following year.

Was this all down to one volcano? Not entirely; nothing in the climate has a single cause. The global climate shifts in various ways on a number of timescales, and its particular disposition at the time a volcano strikes will influence the way the volcano’s effects play out. The fact that an El Niño event—a swing in the global climate driven by the slopping of warm water east across the Pacific towards South America—was getting under way at the time of the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 undoubtedly modulated its climatic effects.

Alan Robock, an expert on links between volcanoes and climate at Rutgers University, notes a particularly intriguing initial condition that could have influenced the world’s response to Tambora. There had been another large eruption—larger than Pinatubo—just six years before. No one knows where this 1809 eruption was, but its signature can clearly be seen in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The sulphur put into the stratosphere by volcanoes shows up quite clearly in the year-by-year records of what was going on in the atmosphere that climate scientists extract from polar ice cores. These records make it possible to give dates to large eruptions in the past even if no one recorded the event at the time (see chart).

Cooling Mr Knightley
The ice cores show that the 1809 eruption was easily large enough to have had effects on the climate, and there is some evidence of cooling in subsequent years. In Jane Austen’s “Emma”, which according to Euan Nisbet, a geologist at Royal Holloway, London, seems to follow the weather of 1814, spring is remarkably late, with apple trees blossoming in the middle of June. Pre-cooling along these lines might have made some of the subsequent effects of Tambora more marked, while possibly lessening others. Some researchers believe that a number of eruptions close together might be able to trigger a climate downturn that lasts considerably longer than the few years models normally predict; a set of eruptions in the late 13th century, this idea suggests, may have been part of the reason for the subsequent global cooling known as the “little ice age”.

If the prior state of the climate system constrains an eruption’s effects, so does that of the human world. The damage done to Europe by the preceding quarter-century of revolutionary and Napoleonic war could have left it particularly vulnerable to 1816’s “year without a summer”. The situation in Yunnan would hardly have been as dire had the population not been hugely expanded by the Qing dynasty’s encouragement of new settlers.

Similarly uncaptured in models, but even more fascinating to speculate about, are the after-effects of the Tambora downturn. In America, the spike in grain prices caused by Europe’s hunger drove a wave of farmers across the Appalachians to where the Ohio Valley was enjoying far more clement weather, with barges taking exports for Europe down the Mississippi in ever larger amounts. The collapse in the grain price when Europe’s harvest recovered contributed to the American economy’s first major depression.

The historian John Post, in a study of Tambora’s effects published in 1977, “The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World”, held that the volcano reshaped European politics. The disorder that sprang up in the bad weather from 1816 to 1818, and its subsequent repression, created a climate for authoritarian rule that held sway until the middle of the century. Mr D’Arcy Wood points out that it was in the aftermath of the Tambora famines that farmers in Yunnan started to plant opium poppies, the value of which as a cash crop offered some insurance against future failures of the grain harvest.

On top of such structural shifts, there are the personal stories. If Shelley, Byron and their romantic entourage had not been cooped up in a Swiss villa by incessant rain, would they have amused themselves by writing horror stories for each other—including John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, the first novel to deal with seductive bloodsucking aristocrats, and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, which has shaped fears of scientific innovation from that day to this? If the summer frosts of “Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death” had not driven Joseph Smith, a farmer, from Norwich, Vermont to Palmyra, New York, a place of vigorous religious enthusiasms, would his son Joseph junior still have been able to find the golden tablets to which the angel Moroni led him a few years later, or would the history of Mormonism have been very different?

Reappraising the risks
And what if this happened again? In general, volcanoes are not something people around the planet worry about very much. In lists of the 40 most expensive and most lethal natural disasters since 1970 recently produced by Swiss Re, a reinsurer, no eruptions feature at all. Models of the economic losses that large eruptions could cause are nothing like as well developed as those that the insurance industry uses for storms, floods or earthquakes, because such losses have mattered little. Some reinsurers, though, are beginning to put that right.

One worry is that even quite a small eruption could cost a lot if it hit a built-up part of a developed country. A study by Willis Re suggests that an eruption of Italy’s Vesuvius like the one which took place in 1631 (a much smaller event than that which destroyed Pompeii) could lead to an economic loss of well over €20 billion ($22 billion). Most of the property damage would be down to buildings collapsing under the weight of the ash that falls on them. The 1707 eruption of Mount Fuji produced only 2% as much ash as Tambora did, but Christina Magill of Macquarie University has calculated that if both eruptions were rerun today the urban area affected by heavy ashfall would be greater in the case of the Fuji eruption, since a great deal of that ash fell on what is now Tokyo.

The other reason for thinking more seriously about the damage done by volcanoes than recent history might seem to merit is that geology shows that they need to be assessed on much longer timescales. Today’s earthquakes, storms and floods—which make up the bulk of the natural disasters that insurers worry about—are doing more damage than yesterday’s did, but that is because they hit a world in which there is more valuable property that is likely to be insured, not because the disasters themselves are getting worse. The world’s worst storm or earthquake over a millennium is not all that much worse than the worst of a century. With volcanoes things get worse and worse the deeper in time you look.


In terms of direct effects, this is still not particularly worrying for most of the world’s population. Seven out of eight people on the planet live more than 100km from any potential eruptions. The “Global assessment report” (GAR) prepared for the UN summit on disaster-risk reduction held in Sendai, Japan, in March found that 95% of those at risk live in just seven countries. Five—Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico and Guatemala—are on the circum-Pacific “ring of fire”, where clashing tectonic plates promote volcanism as well as earthquakes; the other two are Ethiopia and Italy. Two-thirds of the exposed population is in Indonesia.

The good news for the people who are at risk is that volcanoes—unlike earthquakes—provide a fair amount of warning before doing their thing. Scientists are increasingly good at looking out for such warnings, and most volcanoes that are close to lots of people are now pretty carefully monitored, though there are exceptions—the GAR points to the Michoacan-Guanajuato cinder-cone field in Mexico as a worrying one. Satellites and seismology are likely to pick up some signs of imminent eruptions from almost all the others. When the warnings seem to merit it, action can be taken. During the 2010 eruptions of Mount Merapi in Indonesia, the largest so far this century, 350,000 people were evacuated; as a result the death toll was only a few hundred. Evacuations kept the casualties at Pinatubo similarly small.

Unfortunately, predicting really large eruptions may be harder than predicting smaller ones like Merapi’s. Before a very large eruption you can expect a volcano to have been dormant for centuries; it takes time for the infernal forces to build up. But that does not mean that the first eruption of any long-dormant volcano will be catastrophic. It might have decades of throat-clearing to go through before it really lets rip. It might go back to sleep.

It was with this in mind that geologists embarked on a project to try to understand long-dormant Pinatubo’s history soon after it started to show signs of life in 1990. They found that the volcano seemed not to be the throat-clearing type, specialising instead in dramatic eruptions. Stephen Sparks of Bristol University says that understanding did a lot to make people feel justified in calling for a big evacuation.

Wherever the next big eruption happens, though, and whether predicted or not, it will, like Tambora, have global effects—and this time there will be a greater range of them. The climate is not the only global system now open to interruption.

All disasters now reverberate more than they would once have done. Disrupted supply chains transmitted the losses from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011 far and wide; tourism meant many more Swedes died in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 than in any recent disaster on their home soil. Volcanoes, though, have the added ability to interfere with one of the ways in which such connections between far-off places are supported. As Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland showed five years ago, a quite small eruption’s ash cloud can have a big impact on air traffic if it is in an inconvenient place.

A really big eruption would shut down large swathes of airspace for a couple of weeks. If the airspace in question were hard to reroute around, that would have both direct impacts on the aviation industry—Eyjafjallajokull cost it about $1.7 billion—and indirect impacts on its users—valued at about twice the direct effects in that case. The losses would not be evenly spread or easily predictable. The Kenyan women who provide most of the labour for the country’s cut-flower industry suffered disproportionately when Eyjafjallajokull kept their blooms from market.

Another problem not seen when Tambora erupted would be damage to the ozone layer. The reactions by which chlorine destroys ozone are encouraged by the sulphate particles produced by volcanoes. In the 19th century that didn’t matter; there wasn’t any chlorine in the stratosphere. Now, thanks to human intervention, there is. Pinatubo saw global reductions in stratospheric ozone levels and a marked deepening of the “ozone hole” over Antarctica. If a Tambora-scale eruption were to happen in the near future it would have even stronger effects.

Warmer house on the prairie
And then there is the climate. If, like Tambora and Pinatubo, the volcano in question is close to the equator, Mr Robock says models predict an average cooling of perhaps 2ºC in the summer of the next year over much of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, and decreased precipitation over the Amazon, southern Africa, India, South-East Asia and China. The models also make predictions about the weather in the intervening winter: the particles that cool the surface warm the stratosphere, which sets up a strong Arctic jet stream in a particular configuration. Expect a peculiarly warm winter in America’s prairies, western Europe and Central Asia, and a very cold one in eastern Canada, the Middle East and southern China.

It came from the depths! New islands created by volcanos

What these shifts would mean for agriculture is hard to say. The experience of Tambora suggests gloom, but this is not that world. For one thing, there is more agricultural land in more places. That gives more scope for bad harvests in some regions being offset by better ones elsewhere. Both models and studies of the years after Pinatubo suggest that, for various reasons, the world’s plant life as a whole gets more productive in the cooler, drier years that follow eruptions. It is also possible that some parts of a world stressed by global warming might experience sudden cooling as less of a problem than it was after Tambora—though the dryness might exacerbate their challenges.

Another reason for tempered optimism is that the world would know what was coming. Mr Robock and his colleagues would be spreading the word before the eruption was over. Futures markets would doubtless pay attention. So, one would hope, would governments.

The Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre is dedicated both to providing warnings about the human impacts of climate shifts and extreme weather and to acting as an advocate for the people who suffer from them most. It spends a lot of time looking at how to get timely warnings of the likely regional effects of El Niño events to the countries and people they are most likely to harm, along with advice on how to limit the damage. Its head, Maarten van Alst, says he thinks that the climate impacts of a contemporary Tambora might be comparable to those of the big El Niño of 1997-98, which have been estimated at $36 billion, with 130m lives affected and 21,000 lives lost. And as with El Niños, forewarned would be forearmed. Mr van Alst and his colleague, Pablo Suarez, are trying to get a programme started that would study what actions should be given priority in that lull between the eruption and the cooling that would follow.

Such vigilance could come into its own well before there is another Tambora, since there is a way for considerably smaller eruptions to have climatic effects. Eruptions that take place well away from the equator cool only their own hemisphere, and these lopsided coolings have an impact on the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a belt of rain around the equator. When the northern hemisphere cools the ITCZ shifts south, and that causes droughts in Africa’s Sahel. Of the Sahel’s four worst years of drought during the 20th century, three took place after northern-hemisphere eruptions: in the year after the Katmai eruption in Alaska, (1913) and the years of and after the El Chichón eruption in Mexico (1982 and 1983).

A repeat of the Tambora-sized blast at Taupo in New Zealand that took place 1,800 years ago, on the other hand, would push the ITCZ to the north and bring plentiful rain to the Sahel. The Amazon, though, which depends on the ITCZ staying put, would have a dry few years.

For a smallish volcano at high latitudes the effects on the ITCZ would probably swamp the local and regional effects. The direct damage a full-on Tambora would wreak in a populated region would be far greater, and its hard-to-foresee effects further afield, like those Eyjafjallajokull had on Kenya, might conceivably reinforce each other in calamitous ways, multiplying the economic damage. Still, in most cases it seems likely that here, too, the climate effects would trump the rest.

Pinatubo—picayune by comparison

But that does not mean their impacts would be as dire as those felt two centuries ago. As well as having a wider agricultural base and more foresight, the world today is more developed and better governed. A lot of the damage done in famines such as those of the 1810s comes from agricultural workers losing income at a time of price rises and governments doing nothing about it. Today the proportion of the population working the land is in most places much lower than it was then, and most governments both perceive a need to act during famines and have the capabilities to do so. There might well be a need for humanitarian interventions in the weird-climate years that followed; but such interventions do now happen.

That said, there is no reason to limit concern to Tambora-sized eruptions. There are much larger ones on offer. Some 26,500 years ago the Taupo volcano in New Zealand erupted with well over ten times the power it mustered 1,800 years ago. The odds of a really big eruption in any given year are tiny. Over a century, though, they mount up to maybe a few percent. So, though few of those alive today would perish in a rerun of Tambora, the chances of something much worse over their lifetimes cannot be ruled out. And though forewarning would help, there is no way of forestalling. Humans have huge powers over the planet. But they cannot stop a volcano whose time has come.

Think You've Had a Tough Winter so Far? You Haven't Seen Anything Like This

Don't tell that to the people of Oymyakon, Russia - the coldest permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. Though it's situated just one degree north of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, average January temperatures in Oymyakon are nearly 20 degrees colder — below 50 degrees Celsius. 

Now is that below -50 deg C, or 50 deg C below? You can tell I used to  be a weatherman.

Not to be mistaken for Walmart

It's that extreme cold that motivated New Zealand-based photographer Amos Chapple to travel to Oymyakon last winter. Unsurprisingly, people in the village were not in a particularly happy mood.

"The village, to be honest, was kind of depressed," he said. "There was a lot of drunkenness, and people were not as welcoming as I would have thought." 

How likely, Amos, is it that any of those people wanted to be there? And, why are they there, it's not like it's great farmland? I doubt that there are many golf courses.

Wonder if it's self-serve? Looks like it with steps leading up to a window.

Photographing the village was a "nightmare," according to Chapple, who had difficulties finding willing subjects — people would scurry to and from buildings, usually with their face in their hands to stay warm. He instead worked to find subjects by following around local animals.

"It's very desolate, and very very isolated, said Chapple. "The trip there really made that clear. It's absolutely deserted tundra all around.

"A bit more intense than I'd imagined."

Wonder if they have fur-lined seats, or if you have to bring your own?

Intensity aside, Chapple returned home to New Zealand with some amazing shots. Grab a mug of hot cocoa, and take a look through our gallery. You might even be able to feel the chill through your screen.

One thing is for sure, despite the drunkenness and lack of hospitality, these people are a long way from Hell.

UAE Starts Air-Bridge to Supply Syrian Refugees as Winter Storm Hits, but...

Syrian children gather outside their tents at a refugee camp in Deir Zannoun village, Bekaa valley, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015. A snow storm is expected to hit Lebanon affecting Syrian refugees, many of whom live in tents without heating. The government estimates there are about 1.5 million Syrians in Lebanon, about one-quarter of the total population.

This is a great thing for the UAE to be doing and they should be applauded. However, it would have been better if they had started last week and it would be much better if the airplanes were not returning to Abu Dhabi and Dubai empty.

ABU DHABI: President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has directed the immediate start of an airbridge to send relief materials, including blankets, winter clothes and food supplies, to hundreds of thousands of refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, in addition to those affected in Gaza and other Palestine regions.

With temperature dropping below zero, the entire Levant is set to be hit by a heavy snowstorm that will bring heavy rain, hail and snow in the coming days.

Shaikh Khalifa said: “The UAE will remain committed to its humanitarian message and continue to be a global humanitarian capital and a major hub for helping those in need."

He added: "To alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousands of refugees during this winter is a moral obligation, an Islamic duty, driven by truly Emirati values that our founding fathers have instilled in all of us.”

The President has invited all organisations and national bodies in the UAE to participate in this nationwide campaign that aims to involve all citizens and residents to contribute to alleviating the suffering of refugees during the harsh winter.

Ankara, Turkey, Jan 6, 2015

He said: “The sons of the UAE are the sons of good and generous Zayed. We invite all our citizens and residents to participate in this national campaign to aid our refugee brothers and sisters suffering from harsh winter conditions in the Levant.”

Urgent relief
His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has also directed those concerned to immediately start the airbridge to transport urgent relief shipments.

Shaikh Mohammad said: “The UAE, under the leadership of His Highness Shaikh Khalifa, has been and will always remain a great supporter of refugees, never abandoning its humanitarian obligations and duties under any circumstances.”

Shaikh Mohammad added: “We cannot forget all the humanitarian causes that Shaikh Khalifa stands for. His compassion towards suffering people has always inspired the people of the UAE, and his efforts to be the first to help other nations in times of need has granted the UAE global respect and appreciation.”

Shaikh Mohammad has also directed the formation of a special work force from the Emirates Red Crescent, Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation, Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Humanitarian and Charity Establishment, the International Humanitarian City, and Dubai Cares.

Effective immediately, the work force is to start transporting urgent aid packages to refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, in addition to those affected by the weather in Palestine and Gaza.

Tiny First Nation a Remarkable Example to the World

While oil pipeline debates, anti-fracking protests and increasing fossil fuel demands embroil the country from coast to coast, a small Vancouver Island First Nation is leading the way on a different path.

The T’Sou-ke nation has shown us what can be accomplished with long-range planning, something that many democracies avoid for the sake of planning from one election to another. Mind you, they did receive a lot of funding from outside but it looks like the investment is well worth it.

In the past five years, the seaside T’Sou-ke nation has become a world-renowned leader in solar energy. Their projects are the model for others in the capital region and around the province.

The T'sou-ke nation and the village of Sooke are located on the south coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, near the southern-most point of the island.

They also have a massive wind-energy partnership in the works that could augment power for all of Vancouver Island, on a power grid connected to the mainland.

And then there’s the wasabi plantation, an experiment in cash-crop farming that will help bring financial and food security to the community.

These projects and others all stem from a community vision derived to bring members back together and to plan for future generations.

“When we were all involved in developing a collective vision to provide a safe and healthy community we looked far into the future and said, ‘What do we need to start right now to ensure a secure future for our grandchildren’s children?’ ” said Chief Gordon Planes. The answer came in four parts: Energy security, food security, cultural renaissance and economic self-sufficiency.

While the vision was meant for the T’Sou-ke to prosper, its influence has already spread to communities, academics and governments as close as Colwood and as far away as Sweden.

Planes not only welcomes the interest and outreach, he said it’s crucial.

“Education is the key to moving forward in a sustainable way. We all have to do this together — put aside our differences, get in the same canoe and go — time is running out,” he said.

The tiny Vancouver Island First Nation is emerging as a leader in modern clean energy and an example of traditional sustainable living that its residents have embraced for generations.

“This way of living never had a name. It’s just truly been a lifestyle that my ancestors passed on to my grandparents to my parents and now, hopefully, we will be passing on to my children and so on,” said Linda Bristol, a cultural adviser and former chief of the T’Sou-ke First Nation near Sooke.

In recent years, the aboriginal community has taken advantage of new technology to support traditional lifestyle values and help them thrive in a modern world and economy.

In September of last year, T’Sou-ke was the first aboriginal community in the world to be designated a solar community. Solar programs for Colwood, the Capital Regional District and several First Nations around the province are modelled on what T’Sou-ke has done.

The First Nation is also in the process of developing wind power, an income-generating wasabi plantation and revitalization of the seashore. It has attracted academics from around the world to study its successes, offered mentorship to other aboriginal communities and placed an emphasis on culture.

About five years ago, T’Sou-ke decided to come up with a comprehensive community plan to tackle concerns of its members. The first challenge was getting everyone involved in the process, starting with a meeting.

“It wasn’t just a newsletter that went, calls were made and voicemails left saying: ‘We’d really like to see you there,’ ” Bristol said. As a result, the first meeting was well-attended, and followed up with focus groups and visits to people’s homes over dinner to discuss their concerns.

“It definitely did unite the community because everyone put their thoughts on the table,” Bristol said.

What evolved from the meetings was a community plan meant to serve future generations and honour past traditions.

Chief Gordon Planes called it a back-to-the-future approach.

“We all need to go back to traditional values, respecting mother Earth and treating all life as sacred if we are to be successful in going forward in a sustainable way,” Planes said. “When we were all involved in developing a collective vision to provide a safe and healthy community, we looked far into the future and said: ‘What do we need to start right now to ensure a secure future for our grandchildren’s children?’ ”

“Energy security, food security, cultural renaissance and economic self-sufficiency were identified as priorities,” he said.

These four principles are the anchor to all community planning. Bristol described collecting salmonberries, roots and sprouts in the forest and mussels and clams along the shore when she was a child. When the salmon were running, her dad would spear fish for dinner, she said.

“I remember my granny sitting in the smokehouse. That’s where fish were cleaned, split onto wood racks and cured by slow-smoking. Back then, there was only about 50 of us, just five or six houses.”

Today, there are more than 250 members of the band. The small waterfront reserve is surrounded by development. Houses and boat launches dot the adjacent shore, a major highway, bridge and business border the community.

“When you’re small, you look after each other; everyone has their role,” Bristol said. “When you grow so quickly, people are not familiar with this. So there was a momentary disconnect. It took a few years for everybody to relate to each other, but that’s what happened.”

Autonomous energy
The massive sheet of 440 photovoltaic solar panels on the T’Sou-ke reservation looks space-age next to an ancient waterfront shell midden and atop a traditional dugout canoe shelter. The panels provide power for several administrative buildings in the community as well as eight houses. The rest goes back to the grid.

On a sunny day, the excess can be up to 90 per cent of the power produced. The profits from selling the power back to B.C. Hydro offset any power bills during the darker months of the year.

“We call it a net-zero program. Basically, B.C. Hydro acts like a big battery for us, and the extra power gets used elsewhere in the province,” said Andrew Moore, a former architect from London who was hired by the T’Sou-ke First Nation to do communications work but ended up in the core group planning the solar program. He estimates the exchange saves more than $1,000 a year in power bills.

In 2009, T’Sou-ke began the journey to become the largest solar energy-producing community in B.C. A $400,000 grant from the Clean Energy Fund of B.C. was the initial boost, and $500,000 more from various government sources followed.

In addition to the solar panels, solar hot water heating systems were installed on more than 40 homes. Conservation and education programs were started in the community and then opened up to visitors. In 2013 alone, 32 schools toured the solar projects. Students pledged their commitments to the environment on paper leaves posted on the band-hall wall.

There’s an electric-car charging station outside the main office and Moore had his electric bike charging at another one around back.

“The only way we know the power is out in the area is when people from town arrive at the front door with computers and phones to be charged,” Moore said.

These solar projects nabbed T’Sou-ke an official solar-city designation from the Canadian Solar Cities Project, making it the first designated aboriginal solar community and third designated city in Canada. In a September ceremony, Solar Cities executive director Bob Haugen presented Chief Planes with a brass sundial forged at a solar-powered foundry in Nova Scotia.

“T’Sou-ke is so interesting because they often produce more energy than they use and they have solar on so many households,” said Haugen, who operates the non-profit organization from Victoria. “Globally, this shows what so many cities can do with solar power and other clean energy sources. The implications for aboriginal communities that are remote or in the north are huge.”

The provincial government noted the potential in T’Sou-ke’s solar program and invited it to join a mentorship program for remote and First Nations communities in 2010 and 2011.

“The T’Sou-ke First Nation was selected as a mentor community because of their extensive experience in developing and implementing an energy efficiency program — including youth activities around energy efficiency,” said Matt Gordon, spokesman for the Ministry of Energy and Mines. “Peers have the ability to share lessons learned in a more candid and open format.”

Communities receiving mentorship said this type of peer mentorship has saved them money and time, and helped improve the quality of their projects.

The next big energy project for T’Sou-ke moves from the sun to the wind. In October last year, they announced a partnership with TimberWest Forest Corp. and EDP Renewables Canada to develop large-scale wind projects. The $750-million project could generate power for up to 30,000 homes — significant for the Island which gets two-thirds of its electricity from the mainland.

T’Sou-ke will provide some of its traditional territory to house the projects and have partial ownership. The turbines will be far away from any residential areas.

Last February, T’Sou-ke was one of five Coast Salish nations to sign an incremental treaty agreement with the province. This included the return of 120 hectares of Crown land in the Juan de Fuca electoral area, providing for land and development opportunities under their own for the First Nation’s private company, subject to government laws and regulations.

For Chief Planes, these various energy projects are legacy as well as business.


“Power is power. To have control over your own electrical power through the elements, the sun and wind, puts you in a very powerful position in society,” Planes said. “We have developed a strategy that not only makes all our nation’s administration autonomous in power but we are able to support other First Nations and municipalities to go in the same direction.”

Food security

Four-year-old Tessa Routhier carefully hoists a water nozzle over potted marigolds while her grandmother, Denise Routhier, meanders through plant beds pruning dry bits. The toddler clearly knows her way around a greenhouse.

“She was gathering seeds at school the other day,” says her grandmother.

The T’Sou-ke First Nation’s Ladybug Garden and Greenhouse was started in 2008 to harvest fresh produce and herbs for the community but also as a means to preserve native plants and how to find them.

“I remember my aunt would send us out to find things like mint or nettles and make us tea,” said Christine George. She started the garden with a $70,000 aboriginal health grant from the Vancouver Island Health Authority — now called Island Health.

“Now we take youth out on hikes to find things like camas, knotty onions, rosehips and chocolate lilies,” she said. A recent hike went to a cob oven found near the Sooke Potholes.

Community gardeners — young and old — gather all their own seeds and explore secret spots for things like labrador tea and cotton grass. Seasonal workshops include making essential oils and holiday wreaths from local holly.

“We also create booklets for children to identify and name plants in Sencoten, to practise the language,” said George, who is also the band secretary. “I come to the greenhouse on lunch breaks, as much as possible. It’s my passion.”

The garden produces food and herbs that go to weekly community luncheons, meals- on-wheels programs and markets — seven of which took first-place ribbons at the Saanich fair last fall.

Being an oceanside community, the loss of shellfish and salmon has been a huge gap maintaining traditional food practices. There are issues with sewage outfall, and Moore said Sooke doesn’t have the money to redirect drainage away from the river and basin.
He said T’Sou-ke is looking at developing its own treatment plant on-reserve that neighbouring streets could tap into to reduce seepage from old septic fields that finds its way into Sooke Harbour.
They have also entered into a joint project with the Chinese Canadian Aboriginal Development Enterprise to research feasibility of farming oysters and sea cucumbers on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Economic stability
Food is the source of the band’s new and ambitious income-generating project. It plans to produce wasabi commercially as a franchise for Vancouver company Pacific Coast Wasabi. The company already has a greenhouse project in Nanoose Bay.

T’Sou-ke was recently awarded $175,000 from Nuu-chah-nulth Economic Development Corp. for the project, which will include building three large greenhouses — likely next to the Ladybug Garden — with the goal of producing half an acre of wasabi a year. The root grows year-round, harvested every 12 to 15 months.

The project comes on the heels of having to let another one go. Last year, T’Sou-ke was offered $1 million from the provincial government to develop energy-saving technology for hothouse greenhouses. A feasibility study revealed that their plan for four acres of greenhouses to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers to sell would not even come close to competing with products from California and Mexico.

“Although it was disappointing to give the money back, we find we have a more sustainable product in wasabi, a cash crop which thrives in our West Coast climate without artificial heating or lighting and attracts a high price from an international market,” said Moore.

Worldwide demand for wasabi is at a premium. Fears over radiation levels in Japanese soils after the 2011 earthquake and reactor breach have marred the market. The nasal-clearing stuff served with sushi in restaurants is often a cheaper horseradish paste dyed green. But pure wasabi goes for $70 to $100 a kilogram, a delicacy Islanders might soon be able to find at local farmer’s markets if the project succeeds. There’s also the pharmaceutical exploration of the plant’s anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory affects, something that’s gaining ground in science and popular health fields. Television celebrity Dr. Oz is a big wasabi fan.

“This will not only generate income; it will create new jobs,” Moore said.

Jobs have been proven to be one of the best byproducts of the First Nation’s ventures. Just ask Larry Underwood. He spent 17 years as a mill worker, travelling home to T’Sou-ke from Gibsons and Port Alberni on weekends to be with his family — which includes five kids.

When the solar project began, he found his opportunity to work closer to home and gain expertise in a different field. Now the band councillor is a certified installer and part of the greenhouse project.

“The opportunity for work and training was fantastic. I was commuting back and forth wondering what I was going to do,” he said. “But to be a minute away from work and be part of that big a project was something amazing. It was the biggest thing on our reserve.”

Renaissance of traditional values
While the new technology and income-generating projects will help future generations prosper, the foundation of the community plan is the legacy of culture.
Elder and spiritual leader Shirley Alphonse has a ritual she leads for T’Sou-ke children and youth. They are given a cedar branch to dip into the sea with a blessing for the ocean and everyone it touches around the world.

“They know the routine now; it comes naturally. There’s a respect for our teachings and it connects us to the rest of the world,” said Alphonse, who has shared the exercise with visitors and children from other communities.

Both Alphonse and Bristol are dedicated to preserving cultural knowledge, but see it as something that should be accessible and integrated in everyday life.

Alphonse’s guidance in cultural traditions extends from working with young people at the Ladybug Garden and art projects, such as basket-weaving, to leading youth in smudge ceremonies in traditional territories and even providing spiritual services for the community.

“I realized the power of healing circles after attending one for residential school survivors many years ago,” she said. This led to her calling as a unique spiritual healer. She offers traditional blessings but also serves as a liaison with the Catholic church, at the request of a Victoria bishop several years ago.

Being able to care and help alleviate suffering of others has been a gift, she said.

Bristol helps lead the T’Sou-ke Arts Group, which hosts a weekly crafting night and special workshops on knitting, weaving, carving, drum-making and more.

She also organizes the annual Ista Ya Conenet event, an Amazing Race of sorts where participants go on a scavenger hunt around the Sooke region with clues promoting cultural knowledge.

“We share and offer these things but do not impose them,” Bristol said.

“When they come to us, there is a genuine interest and they are welcomed.”

To learn more about T’Sou-ke, visit tsoukenation.com  

- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/island-first-nation-grasps-potential-of-alternative-power-1.779062#sthash.rpen4tx7.dpuf

Why Chechens Hate Russians, A Stalin Legacy

Isa Khashiyev with the Koran and daggers
his family hid during their 13 years in exile

Seventy years ago, in February 1944, nearly half a million Chechen and Ingush people were herded into cattle trucks and forced into exile in remote parts of the Soviet Union. It's estimated that more than a third of them died before they were allowed back 13 years later.

"At dawn, five soldiers entered each house and took all the men away - anyone over the age of 14. I was 10 years old. Then they said they would deport all of us," says Isa Khashiyev.

"We had 10 people in our family - mum and dad, grandmother and seven children. I was the eldest, and my youngest sister was three months old.

"The soldier who was assigned to deport us was very kind. He loaded our truck with five sacks of grain and helped us pack our bedding and other belongings. It was thanks to him that we survived," he says. The truck took them to the nearest railway station in Ingushetia where they were put in a cattle wagon with 10 other families.

Sanu Mamoyeva spent eight years in a
Gulag for listening to anti-Stalin folk
music - she made this case to bring
her possessions home to Chechnya.

Khashiyev's family was sent on a 15-day journey to Kazakhstan. "We had no water and no food. The weak were suffering from hunger, and those who were stronger would get off the train and buy some food. Some people died on the way - no-one in our carriage, but in the next carriage I saw them taking out two corpses."

It was cold and dark when they arrived in Kokchetav, in the plains of northern Kazakhstan. "We went off on a sledge, I fell off at one point, but they stopped the sledge and my mum ran back to find me," says Khashiyev.

"Our baby sister died that night. My dad was looking for a place to bury her - he found a suitable place, dug the grave and buried her… she must have frozen to death."

The exiles were housed by local families, not all were happy with the situation. "The landlady didn't want to let us in - she had heard that we were cannibals or something," he says. "Eventually she agreed to take us in, but she wouldn't speak to us."

Khashiyev is one of nearly 100,000 Ingush who were deported - nearly 400,000 Chechens were exiled at the same time. Both had a long history of resistance to outside authority. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (who was completely paranoid, partly thanks to the NKVD which exploited that paranoia for their own benefit) suspected them of collaborating with German forces as they pushed south into the Caucasus in 1942 and 1943.

Khumid Gabayev's father died in exile -
he brought his remains home to Chechnya for burial

Other nationalities deported en masse included the Balkars and Karachai, also from the North Caucasus, the Kalmyks, whose territory borders the Caspian Sea, the Crimean Tatars and, from the South Caucasus, the Meskhetian Turks.

Exiles who survived the difficult journey east had to abide by strict regulations curbing their movement. They had to report to the authorities regularly and if they broke the rules they risked lengthy prison sentences in labour camps where conditions were even worse.

On their return to Chechnya,
deportees had to fight
 to reclaim their land and
restore ancestral towers

The NKVD or secret police were the eyes and ears of the government and kept a close eye on the deportees. But some NKVD officers - like Alaudin Shadiyev, who had fought against the Nazis, but was deported along with all his compatriots - found this very tough.

Mukhtar Yevloyev who was deported
 as a young boy tends sheep
like his father before him

Alaudin Shadiyev fought against the Nazis and was later assigned to the NKVD secret police. "I was very upset. I used to cry every night. And I did my best to help my people, and also to help the secret police," he says.

Shadiyev's job was to check up on the exiles but he was horrified by the conditions he found at one deserted orphanage.

Shadiyev
wearing his medals

"I was asking, 'Where are all the children?' And someone waved in the direction of the forest… and under the trees I saw lots of babies lying on straw. Then a teenage girl came up to me, and more girls joined her, they were all about 12 years old, or younger.

"The eldest pointed to the babies lying around, some on rags, some on the straw, and they were stretching their arms towards me… they were asking for help."

The girls had to forage in the fields and orchards or beg for food. "All these children were dying in silence. It was too hard for me to witness this. Even today I can hardly speak about this," says Shadiyev.

The deportations were a taboo subject under Stalin - the Soviet leader died in 1953 and the exiles were not allowed to return home until 1957. Khashiyev is now 80 and lives back in his native village where he is one of the elders. Shadiyev is 94 and lives near Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia.

Chekhkiyeva on her ancestral land
Tovsari Chekhkiyeva, now 101, had to fight to reclaim 
her family's land in Ingushetia when she returned home

Barefoot College Trains Illiterate Grandmas as Solar Electrical Engineers

Here is a terrific idea:

Dr. Sanjit “Bunker” Roy told us about Barefoot College he founded. Dr. Roy travels to the least-developed countries and selects grandmothers who will study in India for six months and return to their communities as solar electricity engineers.

To be considered for enrollment the grandmothers must be illiterate and from remote communities that do not have electricity. They are taught by illiterate instructors and return home transformed into “tigers,” able to electrify their whole village with solar panels. “They know how to fabricate, install, repair, and maintain community solar electrical systems.”

Dr. Roy explained the philosophy behind the Barefoot College. “If you want to change the quality of life of very poor people anywhere in the world, it is important that you take the communities into confidence. Never underestimate the power of poor people who don’t know how to read and write — they are capable of miracles.”  The News, Mexico.

From Barefoot College.org

The Barefoot College encourages rural people to gain practical knowledge and skills.

Himalayan mountain villages suffer severe winters with temperatures dropping to -40°C, and just six hours of daylight. Kerosene lamps provide lighting, but only for those who can afford kerosene and can walk to buy it. The 2003 Ashden award to the Barefoot College recognised its achievement in training semi-literate villagers as ‘Barefoot Solar Engineers’ (BSEs), to install and maintain solar photovoltaic lighting systems in their communities.

– Both fixed solar home systems (SHS), and solar lanterns provided.
– Project works on a community basis. At the start, community must form an Energy and Environment Committee with at least 30% women.
– Committee decides the monthly payment each family must make for their solar lighting system. Payments cover the cost of maintaining the systems.
– Committee choses men and women from the poorest families to train as BSEs.
– BSEs have 3-6 months training at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan. Training covers installation, maintenance and repair of home solar lighting systems, solar water heaters, solar vegetable driers and solar cookers.
– College buys photovoltaic modules, batteries and materials, and the BSEs make other components of the solar systems.
– Six other rural workshops have been established elsewhere in the Himalayas.
– Committee collects monthly payments, checks that families maintain systems, and monitors the work of the BSEs.
– Less reliance on kerosene reduces air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.
– Improved light gives the opportunity for study, relaxation and work.
– Solar water heaters means that water no longer freezes in the cold winters.
– Vegetable driers and spinning wheels generate much needed employment and income.

Update
– By 2009, a total of 472 Barefoot Solar Engineers had been trained, in India, other parts of Asia and Africa.
– By 2009, about 20,000 solar lighting systems and 65 solar water heating systems installed in 753 villages, as well as vegetable driers and spinning wheels.

The Barefoot College was established in 1972 with the aim of encouraging people to gain practical knowledge and skills rather than achieving paper qualifications. It runs housing, environment, health, education and income generation projects. Training, equipment and other project costs are funded by grants from national and local governments, and international donors, and a US$1.5 million of carbon finance has also been secured. In 2009 the Barefoot College employed 27 people on its renewable energy programme.

“I now look back at my childhood where I always dreamt of doing something big for my society. My mother laughed at me. Now my family and even the village elders respect me and value my contributions.” 
Ritma, a Barefoot Solar Engineer

North Carolina Outlaws Climate Change

A Tale of Two Cities: America's Bipolar Climate Future - Spiegel Online

When Veronica White and Tom Thompson stand on the coastline of their respective cities, 680 kilometers (423 miles) apart, they gaze out at the same ocean, but see different things.

White, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, believes "we have to prepare the entire coastline for disasters, including storms and rising floodwaters." Thompson, a former city planner in New Bern, North Carolina -- an eight-hour drive to the south -- argues the opposite. "All this panic about the climate always amazes me, but people like to believe horror stories," he says.

Since 1900, the sea level in both cities has risen by about 30 centimeters (12 inches). According to calculations by a group of climatologists working for New York City, the sea level in that city could rise by more than three-quarters of a meter (2.5 feet) by 2050, and by one-and-a-half meters 30 years later. The group of experts warns that by the end of the century, average temperatures in New York could be as high as they are in North Carolina today.

According to the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), that state, like New York, will also see warmer temperatures by the end of the century, as well as a sea-level rise of more than one meter. But now the state government in North Carolina has muzzled the CRC with a new law that requires coastal communities to ignore its prognoses. The legislation states that the sea level off the North Carolina coast will not rise more quickly than it has in the last 100 years.

In the United States, two very different worlds have come into existence along the same coastline. In one of those worlds, people pay attention to climate predictions. In the other, they don't. While New Yorkers believe they have to do something against global warming, because it could spell the city's demise, the citizens of New Bern would rather put their faith in God's creation. In New Bern, climate change is a question of faith and conviction that touches on broader issues of American identity. Indeed, climate change has become central to a culture war over the future of America.

"If sea levels did go up by a meter," says Tom Thompson at the New Bern marina, "most of New Bern would be uninhabitable." He is 69 and despite his white hair, looks younger. He walks along the boardwalk, past a new riverfront park and the Hilton Hotel. All of it reflects his work as a city planner. Thompson has brought companies to New Bern, including Bosch-Siemens, which built a factory for electronic devices there, and he knows many people in the North Carolina business world.

He had just retired -- proud of the world he had created -- when the CRC delivered its prognosis that sea levels would rise by about a meter within the next 100 years, swallowing buildings, roads and public squares. It was the same number officials in other coastal states had come up with as a result of scientific research. For Thompson, however, that one-meter announcement was nothing less than a declaration of war, an assault on his legacy.

Shortly after the news appeared in the papers, Thompson worked from an office in the storage room of his wife's business, a home furnishings store on Main Street in New Bern. Sitting in a small space between two cuckoo clocks, Thompson began reaching out to the lobby he had once assembled to protect the local economy against regulation.

He called heads of chambers of commerce with whom he was on a first-name basis. He also spoke to the urban developers and chief executives of the companies he had brought to North Carolina. Thompson told all of them his horror story: of roads and highways that would have to be raised by at least a meter because of the predicted rise in sea level, of disappearing boardwalks and businesses fleeing the area. He also warned them that the building conversions, evacuation routes and property insurance would cost billions.

According to Thompson, some 5,200 square kilometers (about 2,000 square miles) of the state would be in jeopardy. His friends and business associates were alarmed. Was North Carolina about to become a billion-dollar grave?

Thompson told his story until, eventually, Pat McElraft, a Republican member of the state's General Assembly, wrote a paragraph into a bill known as HB 819, which included various anti-climate change provisions.

In April 2013, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety presented an official report on what a one-meter rise in sea level would mean to the state. The economic losses would be staggering, since the affected areas are covered with homes, office buildings and public facilities worth a total of $7.4 billion (€5.16 billion). Everything would have to be rebuilt to withstand the storm surges.

And why? "Just because a few scientists are claiming that that's what will happen," says Thompson. "But they have no evidence. We're supposed to spend money on something that might not happen at all."

Thompson is a God-fearing conservative fighting against the scientific finding that climate change exists. In his view, there are too many numbers and too many estimates that seem contradictory. To him, it feels more like a lottery than science.

It's early morning in Queens, New York. The sun is rising over the Atlantic, its shimmering surface broken only by gentle waves. Veronica White, 54, isn't exactly dressed for a fall walk on the beach. She is going to a gala dinner with the mayor in the evening, and she knows she'll be too busy to change her outfit first.

As commissioner of the Parks & Recreation Department, part of White's job is to protect New York from climate change and rising sea levels. She and her staff of roughly 6,000 employees are responsible for the city's beaches and coastal areas, monuments like the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the High Line and about 1,700 other city parks, 500 community gardens and 2,500 street medians known as Greenstreets. But Rockaway Beach, where she is now standing, is perhaps the best place for White to explain why New York is worried about climate change.

The view from the shore of the Atlantic, with its calm, blue waters and a few well-fed seagulls, seems perfectly idyllic. But when you turn around, the devastation becomes all too apparent: a beach that could no longer truly be called a beach.

Rockaway Beach after Hurricane Sandy

In October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy, dubbed a "Frankenstorm," struck the East Coast of the United States, Rockaway Beach was washed away, swallowed up by a raging storm surge.

What's left of the beach is now several meters below the coastal road, surrounded by sand bags. The boardwalk is gone. "It flew up into the air and, when it was all over, pieces of it were spread around the entire community," says White. The Rockaway community was flooded and littered with sand, overturned trees and utility poles with torn cables dangling from them. Residents were all but paralyzed. "We spent months just cleaning up," says White. "God, it was so discouraging."

She walks quickly along a makeshift wooden platform and looks down at the construction site on the beach, where workers are pounding planks into the sand. They're building a barrier designed to protect Rockaway Beach from being washed away by the next storm. In the coming months, the US Army Corps of Engineers will bring in 2.7 million cubic meters (95 million cubic feet) of sand, which will be piled up and secured with the help of protective walls, geotextiles and beach grass, so that Rockaway Beach can become a real beach again. But will it be enough?

Even before the storm hit, the majority of New Yorkers supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans to transform their city of superlatives into the world's greenest metropolis. "But Sandy brought home to people what climate change really means," says White, "just as 9/11 showed New Yorkers what's at stake in the war against terror."

White concedes that a single storm cannot be directly attributed to climate change. But she also points to the models developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), which indicate that by the end of the century, storms like Sandy will likely occur once every two years. In New York City alone, the storm killed 44 people, destroyed thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of cars, and caused $19 billion in total damage.

And as the sea level rises, the consequences of every storm surge will spread to larger areas and affect more and more people. About 400,000 New Yorkers live in flood-prone areas today, a figure the NPCC estimates will double by 2050.

Sandy also caused damage in North Carolina. The Outer Banks, a group of barrier islands and one of the state's most popular tourism destinations, were cut off from the mainland for a period of time. But residents are accustomed to storm damage and have gotten used to rebuilding destroyed houses instead of investing a lot of money in precautions to avert future damage.

In Tom Thompson's world, they call it faith in God. It's a world in which a government that provides for its citizens is not seen as a moral necessity, but as an immoral temptation that makes hardworking people lazy. And it's a world shaped by the fear of a nanny state that deprives citizens of their freedom.

In Thompson's worldview, only socialists and cowards prepare for the worst. Although North Carolina had a Democratic governor until the beginning of the year, and a majority voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, it remains a state that defends its lax gun laws, closes abortion clinics and where many people flatly refuse to believe in the existence of climate change.

And so North Carolina continues to plod along, blithely ignoring the warnings of the scientific community. When the law was passed in July 2012, then Governor Bev Perdue merely warned: "North Carolina should not ignore science when making public policy decisions." She was referring to climate change. Nevertheless, she refused to veto the law, which dictates to the sea how high it is permitted to rise off the coast of North Carolina. Perdue did point out that the issue would be revisited in four years.

"If we discover in 10 years that the sea level is truly rising at a faster pace, we can always start building roads at higher levels," says Thompson. "But why start now?"

Global Warming, Climate Change, Is It Our Fault? Can We Fix It?

I am not endorsing Professor Plimus' stand here, but he sure does raise some interesting points.

Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology. 

These are his extensive credentials.

Born               12 February 1946 (age 67)
Residence       Australia
Nationality       Australian
Fields              Earth Science, Geology, Mining Engineering
Institutions       University of New England,University of Newcastle,University of Melbourne,University of Adelaide
Alma mater      University of New South Wales, Macquarie University
Thesis              The pipe deposits of tungsten-molybdenum-bismuth in eastern Australia (1976)
Notable awards Eureka Prize (1995, 2002),Centenary Medal(2003), Clarke Medal (2004)


Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From? 

Professor Ian Plimer's book in a brief summary.

PLIMER: "Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland . Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you.Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life. 

I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad,nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. 

Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One year - think about it.

Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year. 

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus 'human-caused' climate-change scenario.

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change' - you know why? 

It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bullshitartists got caught with their pants down.

And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.

It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.

But, hey, .....go give the world a hug and have a nice day.

There is no question that the planet is warming. I have no idea where Professor Plimer came up with the idea that it has cooled by 0.7 deg. C in the past century, but I would love to know. 

That man's activities contribute to that warming is also not in question. What the question is is, how much are we contributing, and if we reduce carbon emissions, how much of an affect would it have on global warming. Professor Plimus is saying that the answers to both questions is, 1) 'not very much' and 2) 'not at all'. 

If he is right, then carbon trading and a whole bunch of other 'green' measures are nowhere close to being worth the effort or expense.

My Response to an Atheist in the Manila Times

The following is my response to a columnist at the Manila Times. It is printed on their website today. The Times freely discusses spiritual themes from different points of view, unlike most newpapers/web sites which tend to avoid the subject as much as possible unless it's a defamatory story.

The columnist, Rigoberto Tiglao is an atheist and points out some interesting fact on how "Acts of God" affect people in terms of faith. Of course, he is referring to Super Typhoon Haiyan, called Yolande in the Philippines. He also quotes Epicurus, a 4th century Greek philosopher who dismissed God through his own logic. 

The entire article can be read at: http://manilatimes.net/do-acts-of-god-create-more-believers/53511/

Epicurus argument: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then, he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? The why is there? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

The first Super Typhoon - the Biblical Flood

Responses to Do ‘Acts of God’ create more believers?
Gary Wm Myers says:
November 17, 2013 at 2:31 pm

Mr. Tiglao,

Thank you for that well-written and well thought out article. You make some excellent points. However there are some gaps in your logic. For instance, Epicurus’ reasoning is very limited; he does not understand that God gave man free will and authority over the earth. Free will means the freedom to choose good or evil. The freedom to choose evil must come with the freedom to do evil, otherwise it’s just an illusion.

If God were to intervene (for instance, to stop the sexual abuse of 100,000 children in the Philippines), then man would have no free will at all. Man must have the ability to choose good or evil in order to spend eternity with God. That is why we are here on this planet – to prepare for Eternity.

God can, and does intervene at times, but He takes His authority to do so from those who pray. To do otherwise is to usurp the very authority He gave man over the earth. Then you would call him a hypocrite.

Your article ignores the question of Who Jesus Christ was (is), and it assumes that God doesn’t exist, therefore all communication with God is one way and God has never proved His existence.

God has proved Himself to millions of Christians in many, many ways. He is not part of our imagination but a very real part of our lives. That you cannot communicate with Him is because you are not willing to believe. It’s always a question of will. Once you are willing, God can begin to open your eyes to the truth. Are you willing?

Typhoon Haiyan and Climate Change, What's the Connection?

Reported by Der Spiegel. 

Many at the climate conference in Warsaw and around the world see a link between global warming and the devastating typhoon in the Philippines. But several studies point to other causes -- and even more worrisome trends.

Typhoon Haiyan

 The UN climate conference got off to a deeply emotional start in Warsaw on Monday. "It's time to stop this madness," said Yeb Sano, the lead Filipino delegate, fighting tears over the death toll of an estimated 10,000 from the typhoon catastrophe, in an address to his counterparts from almost 200 countries. The world must finally reach an agreement, he continued, to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to halt global warming.

"We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families, suffering the devastation and misery, having to count our dead, become a way of life," Sano said.

Environmental organizations back Sano's stance. "While we can't yet say how much climate change influenced this monster typhoon, we do know that extreme weather events are becoming more extreme and frequent because of climate change," wrote Daniel Mittler, the political director of Greenpeace International, on Sunday. Like other environmental activists, Mittler believes governments "in cahoots with the fossil fuel industry" have helped cause such extreme weather events, which they expect to become more frequent.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), outside Berlin, also agrees. "How can those who do all they can to fight climate-protection measures sleep in view of the images coming out of the Philippines?" he asks.

Typhoon Haiyan was one of the, if not the strongest hurricane to hit land.

Can the deadly typhoon really be attributed to man-made climate change? Statistics reveal other causal connections. For example, the way in which houses, dikes and settlements are built plays a decisive role in determining how many people will be hurt by a storm. In the United States, this has led to a steady decrease in hurricane-related deaths since 1900 despite significant rises in both the population densities and storm frequencies in at-risk areas. For Haiti, there are studies claiming that "urbanization in and migration into storm hazard prone areas could be considered as one of the major driving forces of (its) fragility" when affected by storms.

This is a causal connection? I don't think so. While it is a factor in the degree of damage done by storms, that has changed little in the past hundred years. That storms are getting more violent is a given. The reason they are getting more violent is because ocean temperatures are getting warmer.

As a result of such factors, storms even weaker than "Haiyan" could result in even extremer catastrophes.

For example, tropical cyclone "Nargis" killed almost 140,000 people in Burma when it struck in May 2008 even though it was two categories on the hurricane scale below "Haiyan" when it made landfall.

In March, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish its fifth and newest assessment report on the state of climate change. In the second part of a draft of the report, the organization stresses the importance of constructing more robust buildings that can better withstand storms. A richer world might be able to protect itself better: Measured in terms of global economic output, one study finds, increasing prosperity could cut storm-caused damage in half by the end of the century.

Duh? Increasing prosperity could solve a lot of problems. But they offer no suggestions as to how to accomplish this. Nor do they offer any probability of that happening. Frankly, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for third world countries to become wealthy.

But that is only one side of the story. The other is the long-debated question of whether global warming can change the nature of storms. A lack of data makes analysis more difficult, and it wasn't until roughly 30 years ago that it became possible to make systematic observations based on satellite data. Before that, storms were appraised in large part based on data related to damage and sea level. And flights by courageous pilots into the eye of the storms.

In its most recent assessment on global warming, released in September, the IPCC stated that there were no identifiable long-term trends when it comes to tropical cyclones, which are also known as hurricanes or typhoons. However, there are fears that the strongest storms could grow even more destructive.

Map shows very warm water where Haiyan developed

Tropical storms draw their energy from warm water. But the equation "warmer oceans equals more storms" doesn't hold true. The phenomenon known as wind shear as well as airborne dust particles can weaken them. Indeed, some have posited that reductions in air pollution in the Western world since the late 1970s have contributed to an increase in hurricane activity over the Atlantic since then. This ignores a significant drop in tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic in the past few years.

In 2012, researchers from the University of Copenhagen reported that hurricane activity in the Atlantic had been rising for decades and had now grown as strong as it was at the end of the 19th century. However, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) states that this trend was broken in the Atlantic at the turn of the millennium. The 2013 storm season, which ends in November, has so far been especially mild, with only two hurricanes, especially considering all the pessimistic forecasts published at the beginning of the year.

The WMO also reports that, over the last decade, there has been below-average tropical storm activity. In fact, Ryan Maue, a climate researcher at Florida State University, wrote in 2011 that worldwide tropical storm activity has reached a low point. Another study, from 2012, calculates that the number of storms has been declining since 1872.

Nevertheless, there is still the question of where things will go from here. The IPCC states that simulations predict there will be fewer tropical storms as the global temperature rises. Brilliant, since that is what has been happening.

But the most unsettling finding is that the strongest storms could get even stronger. The consequences of this could be grave, writes Yale University researcher Robert Mendelsohn. According to his estimates, the strongest 1 percent of storms could cause more than half of the damage of all storm activity combined.

So there you have the reality. Hurricanes will be less frequent, but some will be much stronger than we have become used to.

However, since these giant storms come so infrequently, experts say it might be centuries before it is possible to actually measure the effects of climate change. Personally, I don't think they will be so infrequent in the coming decades. Just a year ago we had Superstorm Sandy, in 2005 Rita was the 4th strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, at the time.

For the Philippines, other changes in the earth's climate might prove much more worrisome. For example, there are hardly any other places where the sea level is rising as quickly, and storm floods there continue to get higher. What's more, climate researchers expect to see more precipitation in a warmer world, as milder air can retain more moisture. As a result, typhoons could trigger even greater flooding.