Up to 10,000 dead, millions homeless in Bangladesh: officials

Source: AFP

BARGUNA, Bangladesh (AFP) - Up to 10,000 people are dead and millions homeless and hungry in cyclone-hit Bangladesh, officials said Sunday, as the army and aid workers battled to reach the country's devastated coast.

Three days after cyclone Sidr tore into one of the world's poorest nations from the Bay of Bengal, rescue workers were still fighting their way through a landscape of flattened villages and traumatised crowds.

Survivors on the isolated southern coast, where many areas were still out of reach for aid convoys, warned they would soon die unless help arrived.

"I lost six of my family members in the cyclone. I am afraid that the rest three of us will die of hunger. We are without food and water for the last few days," said a 55-year-old farmer, Sattar Gazi.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071118/wl_sthasia_afp/bangladeshcyclone

A combination of low lying land and one of the most densely populated coastlines in the world. I will be surprised if it is only 10,000 dead.

killing people in other parts of the world.

With all our resources and wealth, it's a crime how little we help rather than hurt.

drum roll...

....

The US Navy


snip

Many foreign governments and international groups have pledged to help, including the United States, which offered $2.1 million and the United Nations, which promised $7 million.

A U.S. military medical team is already in Bangladesh and two Navy ships - the USS Essex and USS Kearsarge - each carrying at least 20 helicopters and tons of supplies, will be made available if the Bangladesh goverment requests them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

The German government offered $731,000, the European Union with $2.2 million and the British government with $5 million. France pledged $730,000 in aid, while the Philippines announced it would send a medical team.



snip

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071118/D8T0BB600.html

hmmm......

Bangladesh is a Muslim nation.


I'm sure the oil rich Mulsim states aid will dwarf anything the usual suspects from the crusader infidel west will be sending.... ;)

<crickets>

That can do nothing but do F18 air-strike raids and launch cruise missiles along with all the ships that protect the bloated vulnerable carrier.

problem with having 11 carrier air wings/battle groups is they are never deployed at the same time.
( I'd like to see you post a link with the names of these active 13 CAGS/Grps you claim we have)


Ya think the Chinese could sneak a few sub loads of supplies into the nation ?

What more do you bleeding hearts want?

Why didn't we do anything in the past 200 years? Almost every year tens of thousand people die in that region due to these killer storms. I agree about not killing innocents in our quest for oil but there is little we can do to prevent massive death tolls in that region.

Killer storms are getting worse due to global warming. There is a lot the United States could have done over the past 200 years. We could have been leaders into a better world. Instead...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-1980_North_Indian_Ocean_cyclone_seasons

As you can see, typhoons/cyclones have been a way of life for hundreds of years. To say they are worse due to global warming is debatable. Sort of like how much worse our hurricane season was this year?

As far as population control in Bangladesh, people value children in Bangladesh as they add to the survival ability of a family. More kids = more hands to help earn a living.

Asia Relies on Mangroves as Coastal Safety Nets
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2004/2004-12-10-01.asp

The millennium's worst super-cyclone that hit the eastern Indian coastal state of Orissa in 1999 killed more than 10,000 people and damaged three million houses. Almost all beaches in Orissa were affected except for the Nasi Island in Kendrapara district.

"One reason attributed for this miraculous exception was the presence of an army of mangroves that dissipated the cyclonic power," says S.R. Bhat, a scientist with the National Institute of Oceanography at Goa (NIO-Goa), a mangrove expert.

snip

This root system, together with aerial roots, form a mesh-like barrier. Scientists point out that this root system dissipates the force of even a cyclonic storm and negates the eroding force of waves.

"That's one of the major reasons why we should have more mangroves along the coast to protect our shoreland," urges Bhat

The delta land helped protect New Orleans for years but it has been receding due to the construction of waterways by the Army corps of engineers. They have given up the protection of the city for the sake of better shipping channels.

Climate change is going to hit them again and again until there's nothing and no one left. Any day you or I think we have it hard...we don't. Nature hasn't yet decided to wipe the US off the map. But Bangladesh is at the top of her list. Drowning, starvation, thirst...no money to go anywhere and no way to earn any as livelihoods are destroyed with the neighborhoods. And let's not forget typhus, typhoid, and cholera, all the charms of destroyed sanitation and water sources.

And nobody is planning or intending to take a Bangladeshi refugee. Of course, soon no one will be able to, anyway.

Ten thousand? We are rapidly coming to a time when that will be a good day.

Oh, and did I mention they're going to deploy spotlights along its entire length?

India has decided to go ahead with the plan to floodlight the entire border with Bangladesh to tackle trans-border crimes. The Cabinet Committee on Security Affairs cleared a proposal to put up flood lights along the entire Indo-Bangladesh border at a cost of Rs 1.327 crore at a meeting in New Delhi on Thursday.

A pilot project for floodlighting has already covered a stretch of 277 km in West Bengal and the government now wants to cover the rest of the border areas in the State in next five years. India shares 4,095 km of land border with Bangladesh across West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

The decision to install flood lights along the entire border followed the success of the pilot project that has reduced incidents of trans-border crimes like cattle smuggling, illegal movement of people and fence-cutting, Indian Home Ministry sources said.

India also plans to complete fencing nearly 3,300 km border with Bangladesh. The border fencing remains a contentious issue between India and Bangladesh.

EDIT

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=10085

I'm sure they've already sent aid, and will continue to do so. But India already knows what comes next, and they're acting accordingly.

Seems the nation ( formerly known as East Pakistan )is still only a sandy delta a few inches above sea level to this day.

They're going to need massive aid. Do we have anyone to fill Harrison's shoes? Certainly NOT. Do we have a close second?

:(

The survivors have a long and hard struggle ahead of them.

Meanwhile, morally bankrupt 'world leaders' :grr: add insult to their injury by offering peanuts by way of 'aid'. (All of 200,000 Euro from Germany - probably not enough to buy a studio in Hamburg.)

Damn, this world needs a revolution BADLY.

They were already hurting bad from the worst flooding in about a decade before and now this :cry:

I'm trying to contact her.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hCWU1HjInj-wXByAKQQ7Ea5y_4xw

With no chance of a place to shelter on his small island, a desperate Zabbar Mia tied his two young cousins to a palm tree as the cyclone roared overhead.

His quick thinking without doubt saved the lives of Riaz, 13, and Sumon, five, who were among only a handful of children there to survive the devastating storm.

Around 70 children lived here until Thursday when cyclone Sidr swept in from the Bay of Bengal, bringing with it a six-metre (20-foot) tidal wave and ferocious winds.

The rest are either dead or missing, villagers said, explaining that despite the country's acclaimed cyclone alert system, they received no warning of the looming danger.

"There are hardly any children left alive on this island. These two children are lucky to survive," said heartbroken father Mohammad Mainuddin who lost his wife, two children and two cousins in the disaster.

Al Gore, WHERE are you? This country & planet needs you!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-1980_North_Indian_Ocean_cyclone_seasons

Seems like these killer cyclones were common well before the industrialization of our world. Look at the death tolls from some of these in the past. Bear in mind the total population of India & Bangladesh were quite a bit smaller back then.

any November I can remember.

Earth has never had a stable climate. I am skeptical due to being burned before by scientific "theory". This was the scare tactic I grew up under;

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-about-the-coming-ice-age

The Cooling World
By Peter Gwynne
28 April 1975
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas — parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia — where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If in fact the earth is experiencing global warming due to mans influence, please explain why Mars is also warming at about the same rate?

Climate change hits Mars
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720024.ece
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am skeptical with good reason.

You say that the scientific community of 2007 is ALL wrong? And you're posting information from 1975?! :wtf:

Sorry, but that's something I would expect over at freeperville. :eyes:

Now I have healthy skepticism. Obviously you missed my point by my posting the article from 1975. The scientific community was ALL wrong in 1975. I should assume they are ALL right just because its 2007? I am supposed to swallow the whole story by watching a two hour movie? That seems to be pretty gullible on your part. It is also very weak to start throwing out freeper accusations over my skepticism.
In my opinion the jury is still out on whether or not the warming is caused by man or by the normal heating & cooling cycle the earth has been through since the dawn of time. For example, why did the glaciers recede after the ice age? It was not mans influence that caused that. Why is Mars heating up at the same rate as Earth?
Once burned twice shy.

... if you thought that "the scientific community was ALL wrong in 1975"
considering that precious few scientists were actually predicting what you
termed "global cooling" (thought there *were* many sensationalist magazine
articles that exaggerated the opinions of a few non-climate "experts" ...
maybe you got confused?).

:shrug:

> In my opinion the jury is still out on whether or not the warming is caused
> by man or by the normal heating & cooling cycle the earth has been through
> since the dawn of time.

By that statement alone you show that you neither understand the current
climate change arguments nor the history of this planet. Coupling this with
your alignment with the "denier" camp means that some people might infer
that you share more than the anti-science philosophy with them. That is why
some people (who've been through this argument with many genuine trolls)
might have been a bit quick to throw nasty names around. You are right that
this is not necessarily an appropriate response but please understand why
the confusion arose.

:hi:

Sorry, there were many reputable scientists who argued the theory of global cooling back in 1975.

" By that statement alone you show that you neither understand the current
climate change arguments nor the history of this planet."

Uh, excuse me? Because I am skeptical I "don't understand"? I am not convinced. I understand the theory though.

Please point out specifically where that statement demonstrates I do not understand the history of this planet. Are you denying the Earth has had many heating & cooling cycles over its history?

Please explain why Mars is warming at nearly the same rate as Earth despite its lack of human influence.

Unfortunately you can not PROVE the current warming trend is a result of mans influence. Prove it.

So it's very difficult to take you seriously.

p.s. Have you seen "An Inconvenient Truth" or Not?

Don't bother explaining why Mars is ALSO experiencing a similar warming trend. I am a freeper because I am skeptical? I guess it is easier to watch a movie and take every word as gospel rather than digging deeper. From my digging around I have seen enough to say I am skeptical of man being the cause of global warming. Of course I am not trying to sell "carbon offsets" to people so I don't have a vested interest in hyping a particular theory.


BTW- you never did explain why this storm was due to global warming caused by man whereas the storms before industrialization were not.

Have you done any research other than sitting down to a documentary movie? Have you even bothered to see what people who question the theory have to say?

:eyes:

Yes, I've listened to the global warming deniers and most of them deny it for religious reasons or because they are freepers or because they hate Al Gore.

Sorry, but those excuses don't cut it with me.

I am saying it has not been proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt. To claim that global warming caused by man was the reason this storm was so devastating is highly questionable.
No matter though, I am willing to bet my use of energy is less than the majority of D.U.'ers. Give me five more years and I plan to be totally off grid. I have had an interest in alternative energy for many years now, long before Al made his movie. My interest was sparked by years of reading mother earth news. To me the ideal way to live is to produce your own energy needs and reduce consumption. Who needs the monthly electric bill?

If you really want to make a difference, look into some of the ideas at;
http://www.homepower.com/

Rather than buying carbon offsets people should buy the means to produce their own power.

> I am NOT saying it isn't because of mans influence.

Upthread it looked very much like you WERE saying that and that's what
triggered my response (amongst others I suspect).
e.g.,
>> Unfortunately you can not PROVE the current warming
>> trend is a result of mans influence. Prove it.

To me, this IS saying that you believe it isn't because of man's influence.
(FWIW, I responded to your post in .53 downthread.)

:shrug:

> Rather than buying carbon offsets people should buy the means to
> produce their own power.

I agree heartily with this point. Anyone who can afford it should do it.
We also however have a duty to ensure that the people who can't afford it
are not simply pushed aside and abandoned. This means addressing the issue
at a global level as well as a personal one.

Moreover, the concept of "carbon offsets" is a complete f***-up that
not only encourages con-men & sleazy profit hounds but also gives the
totally false impression that it is progress. Deliberately? I think so.

My favourite quote on this subject:
"If your doctor tells you to lose weight, what good is it to pay your
neighbour to go on a diet?"

> I am saying it has not been proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt.

See my response to your earlier post in .53 below.

:hi:

Every reputable climatologist accepts that global warming is caused by human activity. It is a FACT that CO2 causes the greenhouse effect. It is a FACT that the increase in CO2 levels from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 390ppm over the last 200 years is the result of human activities, thus, humans have caused most warming of the last century.


The fact that the climate changes without human intervention does not mean humans aren't changing the climate, that's a fallacy. Indeed, the earth, over the long term, has been on a very slow cooling trend towards the next ice age over the past 6000 years, until 100 years ago when it started to spike upwards.


And the people who are saying that global warming is caused by the sun are liars, there was some warming caused by the sun in the early 20th century but that change in solar activity leveled off in the 70s and, last I heard, was actually started to decrease. since the late 50s human caused increased on greenhouse gasses have been the dominant forcing element in the climate system.



Oh, and I've heard that the "warming on Mars" thing was denialist spin on some minor temperature changes on the Martian polar caps.

Read some of this.

http://xtronics.com/reference/globalwarming.htm

In your last chart you show a spike in greenhouse gases. Is water vapor not a greenhouse gas? We all know data can be manipulated to prove just about anything one wants to prove.

"We all know data can be manipulated to prove just about anything one wants to prove." LOL! :rofl:

Water is a greenhouse gas, but it hasn't been the one INCREASING OVER THE PAST 200 YEARS.

In FACT, water vapor (a greenhouse gas) has been increasing.

Water Vapor Trends
There have been several estimates of longer-term changes in tropospheric water vapor. The most recent global estimate shows an increase in precipitable water during the period 1973-1990, with the largest trends in the tropics, where increases as large as 13% per decade were found. A recent study of water vapor trends above North America based on radiosonde measurements from 1973 to 1993 finds increases in precipitable water over all regions except northern and eastern Canada, where it fell slightly. The regions of moisture increase are associated with regions of rising temperatures over the same period, and the regions of decreased moisture are associated with falling temperatures.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/mockler.html

I looked it up a few months ago because I had heard the same thing as you and wanted to check it out.

You might want to get your information from people actually working in the field
http://realclimate.org

In particular...

Warming on Mars
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars

and...

Top ten climate change denialists' arguments
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/11/bbc-contrarian-top-10

One note: global warming is somewhat of a misnomer. What is really happening is global climate change.

> Sorry, there were many reputable scientists who argued the theory of global
> cooling back in 1975.

Did you ever investigate *why* they thought it was cooling?

"One of the sources of this idea may have been a 1971 paper by Stephen
Schneider ... suggested that the cooling effect of dirty air could
outweigh the warming effect of carbon dioxide, potentially leading
to an ice age if aerosol pollution quadrupled."
(My emphasis)

Hmm. Not just "global cooling" then but a "cooling effect" that could
outweigh the known warming effect (back in 1971).

Yet by 1977:
"Schneider realised he had overestimated the cooling effect of aerosol
pollution and underestimated the effect of CO2, meaning warming was more
likely than cooling in the long run."

So, back in 1975 you caught one cooling hypothesis but failed to catch the
correction two years later. It happens. In addition, the anti-pollution measures
being enacted since the early 70s meant that, regardless of the magnitude of
the cooling effect, the amount of man-made aerosol pollution was decreasing,
again leading away from a "global cooling" scenario.

(from http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11643)


>> By that statement alone you show that you neither understand the current
>> climate change arguments nor the history of this planet."
>
> Uh, excuse me? Because I am skeptical I "don't understand"? I am not convinced.
> I understand the theory though.

Sorry, that wasn't tactfully phrased on my part.

> Please point out specifically where that statement demonstrates I do not
> understand the history of this planet.

Your phrase "whether or not the warming is caused by man" suggests that you
are not aware of the body of evidence behind the current climate change
arguments as that evidence proves that Man is indeed the cause of the change
and - especially - of the rate of change being observed. (See below)

Your phrase "the normal heating & cooling cycle the earth has been through
since the dawn of time" suggests that you have an 'interesting' view of the
word "normal" (as opposed to "you don't understand the history of the planet",
sorry again for the bluntness).

> Are you denying the Earth has had many heating & cooling cycles over
> its history?

No, not in the least. The underlying patterns have been identified on the
large scale and the impacts have been noted.

e.g.,
>> It is clear, though, that from about 750 million to 580 million years ago,
>> the Earth was in the grip of an ice age more extreme than any since.

>> The warmest was probably the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM),
>> which peaked about 55 million years ago. Global temperatures during this
>> event may have warmed by 5°C to 8°C within a few thousand years, with the
>> Arctic Ocean reaching a subtropical 23°C. Mass extinctions resulted.

>> The PETM is an example of catastrophic global warming triggered by the
>> build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

(from http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11647)

Are you denying that the current warming phase is far more rapid than any
found in the historic record? (Just so I can understand where your doubt is
coming in.)

> Please explain why Mars is warming at nearly the same rate as Earth despite
> its lack of human influence.

So you claim ... or rather one Russian scientist claims:

>> In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed
>> that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been
>> diminishing for three summers in a row.
>> Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo
>> Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the
>> current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
>> "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,"
>> he said.
>> Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for
>> almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

(from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html)

Sadly, this is even more of a outsider long-shot than Schneider's ...

From the same article:
>> The conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained
>> primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes
>> in the sun.

(a.k.a. Milankovitch cycles on Earth)

... and ...

>> Mars has no (large) moon, which makes its wobbles much larger, and hence
>> the swings in climate are greater too.

And finally,

"The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing
on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%. This was based on a
reanalysis of the likely changes in solar forcing since the 17th century."

"Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall
over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend."

(from http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650)


> Unfortunately you can not PROVE the current warming trend is a result of
> mans influence. Prove it.

90% certainty OK for you?

"The 2nd of February 2007 will one day hopefully be remembered as the day
the question mark was removed from the debate on whether human activities
are driving climate change, said the head of the UN Environment Programme
at the launch of the most authoritative scientific report on climate
change to date.
The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says there is
90% certainty that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities
are driving climate change."

(from http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11088)

Methinks the Head of the UN Environment Programme was overly optimistic in
his estimation of the nature of the opposing side of the debate ...

and around that time, we'd been doing some work in school geography lessons about the Ice Ages. I remember asking my teacher if we were likely to have another Ice Age soon. She said, "A few people think so, but most people don't." If she was right, then it was NOT a general scientific view in the 1970s, though some scientists held it. I don't know if there's anyone here who knows a bit more about how views have changed on this subject?

ETA: Ah, I see that there are, and some have already responded!

working conditions there. They always have the most terrible things happen to them.