New York Times Posts Infographics of Sandy Flooding

This is not what Sandy actually looked like.

Floodwaters from Hurricane Sandy rushing into the PATH station in Hoboken, New Jersey through an elevator shaft. Source NYTimes.

As hurricane Sandy crashed into the North East yesterday many people found themselves without power. Because of this power outage many websites that are headquartered on the east coast were and still are down. For a while The Huffington Post's website was down, and Gawker Media's blog sites are all still down as of noon central time Tuesday 10/30. To understand the impact that Sandy has had on the East Coast The New York Times posted several info graphics and accompanying images, here. The Huffington Post reported that 33 people are dead in New York City, and there is standing water in the subways under the East River. According to the Huffington Post, Joseph Lhota, chairman of the regional Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the damage was the worst in the 108-year history of the New York subway. Sandy even caused blizzards in Maryland and West Virginia.

Frankenstorm!

A monster of a storm is headed for the east coast just in time for Halloween. Hurricane Sandy swept through the Caribbean and if now headed up the east coast. At the same time a nor'easter is headed across the country towards the same area. This article from CBS says that the two storms could meet on tuesday over New York or New Jersey and form a "Frankenstorm" that could inundate most of the east coast with rain.

This image from CBS shows the expected path and arrival time of Sandy.

News coverage of Sandy has been focused on its arrival in New York and New Jersey around Halloween and news sources have had a field day with halloween puns like this one from CBS "Meteorologists expect a natural horror show of high wind, heavy rain, extreme tides and maybe snow to the west beginning early Sunday, peaking with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy on Tuesday and lingering past Halloween on Wednesday." The media has not focused on the at least 40 deaths in Haiti and Cuba which is more horrific or gruesome but much less appropriate for the media to make puns about so these stories have been relegated to the back burner of the media's consciousness.

Canadian Government Allegedly Knew About Iron Sulfate Dumped in Pacific

The name of the company that is is working with the American businessman Russ George has come to light and they are claiming that they had the knowledge and consent of the Canadian government to go ahead with their massive geoengineering project. The company is called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) and they seeded the pacific ocean with 100 tons of iron sulfate back in July.
HSRC claims that multiple departments within the Canadian Government have known about the project for years. According to The Toronto Star, " 'If this (experiment) happened, it would be in violation of Canada’s Environment Protection Act,” Peter Kent, the Minister of Environment, told the Star. He declined to comment on allegations that Environment Canada was aware if it but did not stop it." HSRC also claims to have been in contact with the U.N. and that they approved a small scale iron seeding project.
Science blog io9.com points out that the are effected by the project is 3,861 square miles, which hardly seems small. Io9.com also points out that the likely motivation for George and HSRC is carbon credits. Quebec has a cap and trade carbon emissions management system. IO9.com surmises that if the experiment goes the way the George and HSRC want it to they will try to get carbon credits from Quebec when their program begins in January, they would then sell these carbon credits to carbon producing industries for a profit. 

100 tons of Iron Sulfate Dumped into Pacific Ocean

According to this article from science blog io9.com, U.S. businessman Russ George, in concentration with a private company and with the (probably coerced) cooperation of a Canadian First Nations Tribe dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the pacific ocean.

Io9.com is calling it "the world’s most significant geoengineering project to date." And, as a bonus, the project was super illegal. According to British newspaper The Guardian "International legal experts say George's project has contravened the UN's convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea, which both prohibit for-profit ocean fertilization activities."

George and his team of private scientists dumped the iron sulfate into the ocean because they believe that the iron sulfate will cause an algal bloom that will trap carbon and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. According to The Guardian “Scientists (independent of the dumping experiment) are debating whether iron fertilization can lock carbon into the deep ocean over the long term, and have raised concerns that it can irreparably harm ocean ecosystems, produce toxic tides and lifeless waters, and worsen ocean acidification and global warming.”  Algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico have led to massive dead zones that are depleted of oxygen and cannot sustain life.

In addition to defying UN rules, George also coerced cooperation and funding out of a First Nations village on the island of Haida Gwaii. The village let the scientists dump the iron sulfate off the coast of the island and even donated 1 million dollars to the project. They were told that the project would help the ocean’s ecosystem and the salmon population. A representative for the village said they were not informed of any violations of UN rules or of possible negative effects and if they had known they would have not supported the project.

For me this project is a huge violation of public trust and of the general rules of how you conduct a scientific experiment. They are putting the ocean and the people that base their livelihoods on it at stake. To me this has all the markers of a technological hazard. It could have been avoided if Russ George was not suffering from some sort of eco-warrior world saving hubris.

Image from The Guardian. Red and oreange areas indicate algal blooms.

Most states do not factor global warming into their hazard preparedness plans

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is petitioning the federal government and FEMA to make states take into account the impact of global warming when planning for future natural hazards. According to this post from the NRDC staff blog, currently the vast majority of state plans either underestimate or completely ignore the effect that climate change will have on their flooding and drought risks. Few states have voluntarily taken this into account, but the NRDC wants to make it mandatory for all states in order to be eligible to receive hazard mitigation funding from FEMA. 

This map from the NRDC shows projecte water supply sustainability for the year 2050. The southwest isn't looking so good.

This is especially important given that this July the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared that more than 1,000 counties in 26 states were drought disaster areas – the largest such declaration in history, as published by Bloomberg news. In the future droughts caused by global warming are predicted to affect 1/3 of all counties in the lower 48 states, according to an NRDC study. 

One reason that immediately came to my mind as to why states are not factoring global warming into their hazard plans is because global warming is controversial. I think certain states are so opposed to acknowledging climate change that they would rather have insufficient hazard plans. They are putting a political ideology ahead of people's lives. Or maybe they are just lazy because they know they will get money from FEMA regardless of how accurate their hazard plans are. 

Rising sea levels are washing away UNESCO heritage sites in Ghana

These UNESCO heritage sites happen to be old salve trading forts, but they are part of Ghana's national heritage all the same. They also provide a valuable source of tourism revenue for the country. One fort Ada Foah’s Fort Kongenstein, an 18th  century Danish trading fort, has already sunk into the ocean. According an article from The Christian Science Monitor, climate change is the cause. Sea levels in parts of Accra, Ghana’s capital, could rise by up to 80 centimeters by 2100, according to a study he authored. The coast in the capital is receding at just over one meter a year, he says, while Ada Foah loses about 3.5 meters a year, according to a recent University of Ghana study.

In addition the homes of many people who rely on fishing to make a living are at risk of falling into the sea. The article says that although many people's lives and homes are in danger people refuse to move because living off of the sea is all that they know. Often when a storm hits people flee their homes and hope that they are still standing when they return.

According to this map from the site Prevention Web, a site focused on "the disaster reduction community" many major cities in Africa are at risk of being inundated by rising sea levels.

Here is the the UNESCO heritage site listing for Ghana.