Hazards

In this post I’m not going to talk about the consequences of the climate change, but how hazards impacts can be reduced or mitigated, and also what we do to make them worse.

Even though they have many causes, in a broad way, hazards can termed into:

• Natural or physical- caused by a natural process. Include obvious hazards like earthquakes, landslides, fires, droughts, blizzards, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes and flooding;

• Man-made – created by human negligence, error, or system failure, which includes an array of possibilities that goes from immediate hazards such as dam failure or shipping accidents and global warming, even though it is not believed by scientists called skeptics.

 

Besides the geological hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, peole face other types of natural hazards that result from conditions in the hydrosphere, atmosphere, or biosphere. Flooding, caused by heavy rains, ravage low-lying areas near rivers and streams; coastal erosion eat away at beaches; wildfire threaten life and property in fire-prone areas; tornadoes and hurricanes can cause extensive damage and loss of life.

Even though tose are “natural hazards”, the magnitude of their impacts upon us depend on choices we make. We can make those impacts be worse in various ways:

• Population growth makes people live in areas susceptible to natural disasters;
• Many people choose to live in areas that seem to be attractive but are also prone to hazards. Coastlines are vulnerable to tsunamis and erosion by storms; mountainous areas may feature volcanoes and mass-wasting events;
• Engineer landscapes can increase the frequency or severity of natural hazards. Damming and diking rivers to control floods can lead to floodings; suppressing natural wildfire puts forests at risk of larger fires; mining practices like clear cutting on slopes can induce mass wasting, speed runoff, compact soil and change drainage patterns;
•  Earth’s climate changed by emitting greenhouse gases alter patterns of precipitation, increasing risks of drought, fire, flooding, and mudslides locally and regionally. Rising sea levels induced by global warming increase coastal erosion. Some research suggests that warming ocean temperatures may increase the power and duration of hurricanes.

We can also mitigate or reduce the hazards impacts by:

•  Using technology, engineering, and policy, informed by a solid understanding of geology and ecology. There are building earthquake-resistant structures;
• Designing early warning systems for tsunamis and volcanoes;
• Conserving coastal forests, reefs and salt marshes protect against tsunamis and coastal erosion;
• Better forestry and mining practices can help prevent landslides;
• Zoning regulations, building codes, and insurance incentives that discourage development in areas prone to landslides, floods, fires and storm surges can keep us out of harm’s way and decrease taxpayer expense cleaning up after natural disasters;
• Mitigating global climate change may help reduce the frequency of natural hazards in many regions. 

*Source book: Essential Environment, The Science Behind the Stories, by Jay Withgott and Scott Brennan – 3rd edt.

Some Definitions..

Some basic, but necessary definitions:

Environment: Includes all living and nonliving things around us with which we interact. The use of the term environment, to mean a nonhuman or “natural” world apart from human interaction, is too narrow and incomplete; it hides the connection and dependance between human beings and nature.

Climate Change: Describes trends and variations in Earth’s climate, involving aspects such as temperature, weather patterns, and the effects felt by those changes.

Global Warming: The increase in the avarage temperature of the Earth’s surface. global warming and climate change are not identical, in fact, global warming is one of the consequences of climate change, even though warming does in turn, drive other forces of climate change.

Curiosity…? Weather and climate. Are they the same thing?

Climate: Describes the atmospheric condition (temperature, moisture content, wind, precipitation, barometric pressure, solar radiation, etc.) of a large area through an extended period of time (years, centuries or millennia), while weather refers to the specific and local conditions over a period of hours or days.

Global Warming, a New Perspective

Global warming seems to be generally perceived by the media and the majority of people as a serious problem, one that needs to be talked about often emphasizing the negative consequences in a desperate way to try mobilize societies to prevent so much destruction.

However, talking about the “Day After Tomorrow” and the possible self-destruction of the planet as we know it and proposing ideas too far ahead of our time as the only way to save our future generations doesn’t help at all. Instead of mobilizing and bringing people toward the cause, such speech works like a repellent. Environmental issues repells people; environmentalists are often thought as annoying fundamentalists, believed to be against the growth and development because their ideas would cause the economy to colapse.

The pessimistic tone regarding the predictions of our future along with the surreal ideas to prevent it from happening only causes people to panic. Panicked people are far less likely to act progressively, especially if the situation seems so direly hopeless. People don’t realize what they can do as individuals to slow down global warming and diminish it’s consequences. They only feel powerless, useless and in disbelief of every possible solution. So they do the one thing that panicked people do: Nothing good.

Yes, we must talk about the dangers our future generations may suffer for the way we live our lives. However, it is very delicate to talk about changes and the changes required to prevent all those predicted disasters. Everybody is afraid of changes because it leads to the unknown, and nothing is more scary than the unknown. Therefore, there’s a need to be extra cautious when we talk to people about the need of changing our life habbits, this can not be something imposed simply because it’s impossible to really obligate everybody do something. The key is more than convince people about changing their habbits, but to make them convince themselves. That’s the very best persuasion tactic because people act accordingly to what they believe in.

In my perception, global warming is a conflict. A global economical, political, social and ecological conflict because it affects directly peoples needs, interests and concerns. It doesn’t matter if everybody believes on it or not, everybody’s life is affected by global warming.

However, the word “conflict” generally carries a very negative connotation, for it is automatically related to words like “pain”, “struggle”, “friction”, “fight”, or seen as a “win and lose” situation and so on. Therefore, some people may

What people sometimes forget is the positive side of a conflict, because it can also mean opportunity; opportunity to clarify issues and feelings; to learn to deal with other people and different cultures; to solve problems constructivelly; to look for positive outcomes for humanity as a whole so that our differences can be put aside for a greater good and a common interest: a healthy, clean world that will be able to sustain our species for generations. Opportunity can be seen as a challenge to create a new begining, or at least a better end.

This is what this blog is all about… My goal here is not to judge whether or not technology or politics or companies are good or bad for the people, the environment, the economy or the government, nor is it so restate all the causes of global climate change, something that has become such common knowledge! What I want to present is constructive information to promote debates, inspire ideas, spark curiosity, for from this type of conflcit, solutions may rise.