Arquivo da tag: Desastre

Moral Injuries and the Environment: Healing the Soul Wounds of the Body Politic (Science & Environmental Health Network)

13/12/2012UncategorizedClima, Cognição, Culpa, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Psicologiarenzotaddei

By Carolyn Raffensperger – December 6th, 2012

I have a hypothesis about the lack of public support for environmental action. I suspect that many people suffer from a sense of moral failure over environmental matters. They know that we are in deep trouble, that their actions are part of it, but there is so little they or anyone can do individually. Anne Karpf writing about climate change in the Guardian said this: “I now recycle everything possible, drive a hybrid car and turn down the heating. Yet somewhere in my marrow I know that this is just a vain attempt to exculpate myself – it wasn’t me, guv.”

To fully acknowledge our complicity in the problem but to be unable to act at the scale of the problem creates cognitive dissonance. Renee Aron Lertzman describes this as “environmental melancholia”, a form of hopelessness. It is not apathy. It is sorrow. The moral failure and the inability to act leads to what some now identify in other spheres as a moral injury, which is at the root of some post-traumatic stress disorders or ptsd.

The US military has been investigating the causes of soldiers’ ptsd because the early interpretations of it being fear-based didn’t match what psychologists were hearing from the soldiers themselves. What psychologists heard wasn’t fear, but sorrow and loss. Soldiers suffering from ptsd expressed enormous grief over things like killing children and civilians or over not being able to save a fellow soldier. They discovered that at the core of much of ptsd was a moral injury, which author Ed Tick calls a soul wound.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “[e]vents are considered morally injurious if they “transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations”. Thus, the key precondition for moral injury is an act of transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life, and so forth.”

The moral injury stemming from our participation in destruction of the planet has two dimensions: knowledge of our role and an inability to act. We know that we are causing irreparable damage. We are both individually and collectively responsible. But we are individually unable to make systemic changes that actually matter. The moral injury isn’t so much a matter of the individual psyche, but a matter of the body politic. Our culture lacks the mechanisms for taking account of collective moral injuries and then finding the vision and creativity to address them. The difference between a soldier’s moral injury and our environmental moral injuries is that environmental soul wounds aren’t a shattering of moral expectations but a steady, grinding erosion, a slow-motion relentless sorrow.

My environmental lawyer friend Bob Gough says that he suffers from pre-traumatic stress disorder. Pre-traumatic stress disorder is short hand for the fact that he is fully aware of the future trauma, the moral injury that we individually and collectively suffer, the effects on the Earth of that injury and our inability to act in time. Essentially pre-traumatic stress disorder, the environmentalist’s malady, is a result of our inability to prevent harm.

James Hillman once wrote a book with Michael Ventura called “We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s getting Worse.” In it Hillman said that for years people would go into a therapist and say “the traffic in L.A. is making me crazy” and the therapist would say “let’s deal with your mother issues.” Hillman said “deal with the traffic in L.A.”

So much of environmental or health messaging speaks to us as individuals. “Stop smoking, get more exercise, change your light bulbs.” We take on the individual responsibility for the moral failure. Sure, we need to do all that we can as individuals–that is part of preventing any further damage to the planet or our own souls. But that isn’t enough. We all know it. We have to overcome our assumption that the problem is our mother issues (or the equivalent) and deal with the traffic in L.A., climate change, the loss of the pollinators. These are not things we can address individually. We have to do them together.

Healing the moral injury we suffer individually and collectively from our participation in destruction of the planet will require strong intervention in all spheres of life. Actions like creating a cabinet level office of the guardian of future generations or 350.org’s campaign for colleges to divest of oil stocks, or revamping public transportation are beginning steps. Can we think of a hundred more bold moves to make reparations and give future generations a sporting chance? Our moral health, our sanity—and our survival—depend on it.

Monbiot: The Gift of Death (The Guardian)

12/12/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Consumismo, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Lixo, Mudanças climáticas, Natal, Obsolescência programada, Previsãorenzotaddei

December 10, 2012

Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th December 2012

There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map.

They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they’re in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations.

Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale(1). Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence (breaking quickly) or perceived obsolesence (becoming unfashionable).

But many of the products we buy, especially for Christmas, cannot become obsolescent. The term implies a loss of utility, but they had no utility in the first place. An electronic drum-machine t-shirt; a Darth Vader talking piggy bank; an ear-shaped i-phone case; an individual beer can chiller; an electronic wine breather; a sonic screwdriver remote control; bacon toothpaste; a dancing dog: no one is expected to use them, or even look at them, after Christmas Day. They are designed to elicit thanks, perhaps a snigger or two, and then be thrown away.

The fatuity of the products is matched by the profundity of the impacts. Rare materials, complex electronics, the energy needed for manufacture and transport are extracted and refined and combined into compounds of utter pointlessness. When you take account of the fossil fuels whose use we commission in other countries, manufacturing and consumption are responsible for more than half of our carbon dioxide production(2). We are screwing the planet to make solar-powered bath thermometers and desktop crazy golfers.

People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility(3). Forests are felled to make “personalised heart-shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us.

In 2007, the journalist Adam Welz records, 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa. This year, so far, 585 have been shot(4). No one is entirely sure why. But one answer is that very rich people in Vietnam are now sprinkling ground rhino horn on their food or snorting it like cocaine to display their wealth. It’s grotesque, but it scarcely differs from what almost everyone in industrialised nations is doing: trashing the living world through pointless consumption.

This boom has not happened by accident. Our lives have been corralled and shaped in order to encourage it. World trade rules force countries to participate in the festival of junk. Governments cut taxes, deregulate business, manipulate interest rates to stimulate spending. But seldom do the engineers of these policies stop and ask “spending on what?”. When every conceivable want and need has been met (among those who have disposable money), growth depends on selling the utterly useless. The solemnity of the state, its might and majesty, are harnessed to the task of delivering Terry the Swearing Turtle to our doors.

Grown men and women devote their lives to manufacturing and marketing this rubbish, and dissing the idea of living without it. “I always knit my gifts”, says a woman in a television ad for an electronics outlet. “Well you shouldn’t,” replies the narrator(5). An advertisement for Google’s latest tablet shows a father and son camping in the woods. Their enjoyment depends on the Nexus 7’s special features(6). The best things in life are free, but we’ve found a way of selling them to you.

The growth of inequality that has accompanied the consumer boom ensures that the rising economic tide no longer lifts all boats. In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top 1% of the population(7). The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help the poor, simply does not wash. For a few decades of extra enrichment for those who already possess more money than they know how to spend, the prospects of everyone else who will live on this earth are diminished.

So effectively have governments, the media and advertisers associated consumption with prosperity and happiness that to say these things is to expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule. Witness last week’s Moral Maze programme, in which most of the panel lined up to decry the idea of consuming less, and to associate it, somehow, with authoritarianism(8). When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics.

Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t.

http://www.monbiot.com

1. http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

2. It’s 57%. See http://www.monbiot.com/2010/05/05/carbon-graveyard/

3. See the film Blood in the Mobile. http://bloodinthemobile.org/

4.http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_dirty_war_against_africas_remaining_rhinos/2595/

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7VE2wlDkr8&list=UU25QbTq58EYBGf2_PDTqzFQ&index=9

6. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/07/commercial-for-googles-nexus-7-tablet-revealed/

7. Emmanuel Saez, 2nd March 2012. Striking it Richer: the Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates).http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf

8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p424r

Why Sandy Has Meteorologists Scared, in 4 Images (The Atlantic)

10/12/2012Uncategorizedcomunicação científica, Desastre, jornalismo, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Alexis Madrigal

OCT 28 2012, 12:23 PM ET 126

She’s huge. She’s strong and might get stronger. She’s strange. She’s directing the might of her storm surge right at New York City.

Update 10/29, 4:49pm: The Eastern seaboard has battened down the hatches. Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall in New Jersey in the next few hours, but flooding has been reported in Atlantic City and pieces of New York during this morning’s high tide cycle. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority already shut down rail, bus, and subway service in NYC, as did Washington DC’s authorities. All eyes are on the 8 o’clock hour, when the storm surge from Sandy will combine with a very high tide to create maximum water levels. In the worst case scenario, the storm surge will hit precisely at the moment the tide peaks at 8:53pm. In that scenario, New York City, in particular, could sustain substantial damage, especially to its transportation infrastructure.

The good news, if there is any, is that the forecast hasn’t worsened much. It is what it has been, which is grim. Meteorologist Jeff Masters put it in simple terms. “As the core of Sandy moves ashore, the storm will carry with it a gigantic bulge of water that will raise waters levels to the highest storm tides ever seen in over a century of record keeping, along much of the coastline of New Jersey and New York,” Masters wrote today. “The peak danger will be between 7 pm – 10 pm, when storm surge rides in on top of the high tide.”

Here’s the latest map of the prospective storm surge tonight. You can compare it to the image at the bottom, which shows what the forecast was yesterday.

* * *

Hurricane Sandy has already caused her first damage in New York: the subway system will be shut as of 7pm tonight. Meteorologists are scared, so city planners are scared.

For many, the hullabaloo raises memories of Irene, which despite causing $15.6 billion worth of damages in the United States, did not live up to its pre-arrival hype.

By almost all measures, this storm looks like it could be worse: higher winds, a path through a more populated area, worse storm surge, and a greater chance it’ll linger. The atmospherics, you might say, all point to this being the worst storm in recent history.

I’ve been watching weather nerds freak out about a few different graphs over the last several days, which they’ve sent around like sports fans would tweet a particularly vicious hit in the NFL. You don’t want to look, but you also can’t help it.

Dr. Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at WeatherBELL, put out this animated GIF of the storm’s approach yesterday. “This is unprecedented –absolutely stunning upper-level configuration pinwheeling #Sandy on-shore like ping-pong ball,” he tweeted. It shows how cold air to the north and west of the storm spin Sandy into the mid-atlantic coastline. (Nota bene: his models also show very high winds at skyscraper altitudes.)

This morning, the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Holthaus (@WSJweather), tweeted the following map. “Oh my…. I have never seen so much purple on this graphic. By far. Never,” he said. “Folks, please take this storm seriously.” The storm is strong *and* huge. And when it encounters the cold air from the north and west, it will develop renewed strength thanks to that interaction, a process known as “baroclinic enhancement.”

This last graphic I created from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data that has weather watchers worried. It shows the probability of a greater than six foot storm surge in and around New York City. Hurricane Irene, by comparison, caused a four foot surge.

Note that the highest probabilities are focused tightly around New York City, which also happens to be the most densely populated area in the country. That’s a very bad combination. Jeff Masters, author of the must-read storm blog Wunderground, laid out the general problem.

“[According to last night’s forecast], the destructive potential of the storm surge was exceptionally high: 5.7 on a scale of 0 to 6,” he wrote. “This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed between 1969 – 2005, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew.”

Specifically, New York City’s infrastructure may take an unprecedented hit. The subway narrowly escaped flooding during Irene, and Sandy (for all the reasons above) is expected to be worse. So…

“According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from NHC, Sandy’s storm surge is expected to be several feet higher than Irene’s. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening’s high tide at 9 pm EDT, a portion of New York City’s subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage,” Masters concluded. “I give a 50% chance that Sandy’s storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.”

Update 1:06pm: To get a taste of how forecasters are feeling, here is The Weather Channel’s senior meteorologist, Stu Ostro:

History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States.

On Twitter, Alan Robinson pointed out that I left out another scary map, the rainfall forecast, which shows the storm “sitting over the Delaware and Susquehanna watersheds.” Much of the damage that Irene caused came from flooding rivers. However, there is one key factor militating against similar damage, Jeff Masters of Wunderground says. Irene hit when the ground was already very wet. Sandy is striking when ground moisture is roughly average. Here’s Masters whole statement:

Hurricane Irene caused $15.8 billion in damage, most of it from river flooding due to heavy rains. However, the region most heavily impacted by Irene’s heavy rains had very wet soils and very high river levels before Irene arrived, due to heavy rains that occurred in the weeks before the hurricane hit. That is not the case for Sandy; soil moisture is near average over most of the mid-Atlantic, and is in the lowest 30th percentile in recorded history over much of Delaware and Southeastern Maryland. One region of possible concern is the Susquehanna River Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, where soil moisture is in the 70th percentile, and river levels are in the 76th – 90th percentile. This area is currently expected to receive 3 – 6 inches of rain (Figure 4), which is probably not enough to cause catastrophic flooding like occurred for Hurricane Irene. I expect that river flooding from Sandy will cause less than $1 billion in damage.

A civilização do lixo (IHU-Online)

06/12/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Crise ambiental, Desastre, Lixo, Lixo eletrônicorenzotaddei

05/12/2012 – 09h49

por Redação do IHU-Online

“O Brasil vivencia nos últimos 20 anos uma escalada na desova de descartes de uma forma que não têm precedentes. Entre 1991 e 2000 a população brasileira cresceu 15,6%. Porém, o descarte de resíduos aumentou 49%. Sabe-se que em 2009 a população cresceu 1%, mas a produção de lixo cresceu 6%”, constata o pesquisador Maurício Waldman.

“Admite-se que atualmente exista um descarte mundial de 30 bilhões de toneladas de resíduos por ano. Seria meritório advertir que os lixos já assumiram os contornos de uma calamidade civilizatória. Em termos mundiais, apenas a quantidade de refugos municipais coletados – estimada em 1,2 bilhões de toneladas – supera nos dias de hoje a produção global de aço, orçada em 1 bilhão de toneladas. Por sua vez, as cidades ejetam rejeitos – 2 bilhões de toneladas – que superam no mínimo em 20% a produção planetária de cereais, demonstrando que o mundo moderno gera mais refugo que carboidrato básico. Contudo, mesmo esta notável volumetria de resíduos parece não satisfazer a obsessão em maximizá-los. O resultado disso é uma autêntica cascata de lixos”. Os dados impressionantes são trazidos pelo consultor ambiental Maurício Waldman, na entrevista que concedeu por e-mail à IHU On-Line.

Maurício Waldman (foto) é escritor, professor universitário, pesquisador e consultor ambiental. Tem graduação em Sociologia, mestrado em Antropologia e doutorado em Geografia pela Universidade de São Paulo – USP. É pós-doutor pelo Departamento de Geografia do Instituto de Geociências da Universidade Estadual de Campinas – Unicamp. Atualmente desenvolve, com apoio da Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo – Fapesp, seu segundo pós-doutorado em Relações Internacionais, na FFLCH-USP. Foi chefe da coleta seletiva de lixo da capital paulista e coordenador do meio ambiente em São Bernardo do Campo. É autor e/ou coautor de 15 livros, um dos quais é Lixo: cenários e desafios (São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2010).

Confira a entrevista.

IHU On-Line – De modo geral, como você define o problema do lixo na sociedade moderna?

Maurício Waldman – Há um problema mundial relacionado ao lixo que é inegável. Neste prisma, um dado que chama a atenção é fornecido pela literatura técnica relacionada com o tema. Admite-se que atualmente exista um descarte mundial de 30 bilhões de toneladas de resíduos por ano. Seria meritório advertir que os lixos já assumiram os contornos de uma calamidade civilizatória. Em termos mundiais, apenas a quantidade de refugos municipais coletados – estimada em 1,2 bilhões de toneladas – supera nos dias de hoje a produção global de aço, orçada em 1 bilhão de toneladas. Por sua vez, as cidades ejetam rejeitos – 2 bilhões de toneladas – que superam no mínimo em 20% a produção planetária de cereais, demonstrando que o mundo moderno gera mais refugo que carboidrato básico.

Contudo, mesmo esta notável volumetria de resíduos parece não satisfazer a obsessão em maximizá-los. O resultado disso é uma autêntica cascata de lixos. Exemplificando, a população norte-americana cresceu quase 2,5 vezes entre 1960 e o ano 2000. Porém, o já magnânimo descarte dos Estados Unidos praticamente triplicou desde 1960.

Adicionalmente, outras peritagens mostram que no ano 2020 a União Europeia estará descartando 45% mais rebotalhos do que em 1995. Na União Europeia, um pormenor candente é que o lixo domiciliar se expandiu inclusive em países com evolução populacional pouco expressiva. No caso espanhol, sete anos (1996-2003), foram suficientes para incrementar os refugos em 40%.

IHU On-Line – E no Brasil, como se situa este problema?

Maurício Waldman – Malgrado uma nebulosa peça acusatória culpabilizar os países do Norte pela geração do lixo, o Brasil – ao lado de outras nações do hemisfério Sul – ocupa uma incômoda posição na questão dos refugos. No caso, tanto pelas proporções como pela média per capita. Na verdade, o lixo brasileiro supera a maioria das nações periféricas. Não seria demasiado sinalizar, que conquanto corresponda a 3,06% da população mundial e 3,5% do PIB global, o Brasil seria, por outro lado, origem de um montante estimado entre 5,5% do total mundial dos resíduos sólidos urbanos. Dito de outro modo: o país é um grande gerador mundial de lixo e deve assumir sua responsabilidade em contribuir para com a resolução do problema.

IHU On-Line – Quais os principais e mais urgentes desafios a serem enfrentados?

Maurício Waldman – A situação não admite vacilação e precisamos adotar de verdade os famosos quatro “Rs”: repensar, reduzir, reutilizar e reciclar. A ordem de aplicação é exatamente essa, começando com repensar e terminando com reciclar. Repensar a sistemática de ejeção dos lixos é fundamental, pois o problema, apesar de normalmente visto como uma problemática econômica, é, em larga escala, um tema também pavimentado por injunções sociais, políticas e culturais.

No caso brasileiro, o país vivencia nos últimos 20 anos uma escalada na desova de descartes de uma forma que não têm precedentes. Entre 1991 e 2000 a população brasileira cresceu 15,6%. Porém, o descarte de resíduos aumentou 49%. Sabe-se que em 2009 a população cresceu 1%, mas a produção de lixo cresceu 6%. Essas dessimetrias são também evidentes em dados como os que indicam a metrópole paulista como o terceiro polo gerador de lixo no globo. Perde apenas para Nova York e Tóquio. Mas devemos reter que São Paulo não é a terceira economia metropolitana do planeta. É a 11a ou 12a. Ou seja, gera-se muito mais lixo do que seria admissível a partir de um parâmetro eminentemente econômico.

IHU On-Line – Qual a relação entre a questão do lixo e o consumo (e a consequente geração de lixo) como indicativo de desenvolvimento?

Maurício Waldman – A cultura organizacional da modernidade, cuja mola mestra são ritmos cada vez mais velozes impostos à produção, obrigatoriamente tem na reposição constante dos bens uma meta estratégica da sua reprodução material. Dito de outro modo: trata-se de conduzir o consumo para a satisfação de necessidades que não se justificam em si mesmas, mas prioritariamente constituem pressuposto para a produção. No seu entrosamento mais literal, validar o dinamismo do mercado implica promover o descarte contínuo dos bens, ejetados pelo carrossel do consumo.

Na perspicaz argumentação do filósofo Abraham Moles, vivemos numa civilização consumidora que produz para consumir e cria para produzir, um ciclo onde a noção fundamental é a de aceleração. Consequentemente, quanto mais rápida for a substituição das mercadorias, tanto mais encorpado será o giro do capital. Quando antes e quanto mais os produtos se tornarem inúteis, tanto maiores serão os lucros. Ainda que a contrapartida seja sobre-explorar os recursos naturais e, é claro, maximizar a geração de lixo. Como seria possível arrematar, este conceito de economia é caduco, ambientalmente irresponsável e não tem condição nenhuma de manter continuidade. Não hesitaria em afirmar que ele se tornou uma ameaça para o futuro da espécie humana. Urge redirecionar a economia para outras vertentes: qualidade de vida, preservação ambiental, utilização racional dos recursos naturais, revisão do estilo de vida e da economia dos materiais.

IHU On-Line – O que deveria fazer parte de um plano de gestão de resíduos municipal ideal?

Maurício Waldman – Essa é uma pergunta muito comum. O interessante é que as pessoas imaginam que seja possível criar um “plano padrão” para a gestão dos resíduos. Isto é, um programa capaz de ser aplicado em qualquer contexto. Para citar um exemplo, chegaram a entrar em contato comigo solicitando um plano para uma cidade de 200 mil habitantes. Como é que pode? Claro que o conhecimento do perfil demográfico importa para a confecção de um plano de gestão de resíduos. Todavia, esse dado por si só é insuficiente. Por exemplo, as cidades de Marabá (Pará), Presidente Prudente (São Paulo) e São Leopoldo (Rio Grande do Sul) possuem contingente populacional semelhante, em torno de 200 mil habitantes. Mas isso não significa que uma estratégia de gestão bem sucedida em São Leopoldo possa ser repetida em Marabá ou em Presidente Prudente.

Então, é importante primeiramente obter dados do perfil do lixo de cada cidade, país ou região, assim como as dinâmicas responsáveis pela ejeção de descartes e, na sequência, trabalhar com os aspectos sociais, econômicos e culturais envolvidos naquilo que se joga fora. Não existe lixo: existem lixos. Expressão plural e não singular.

Outro aspecto essencial é mudar a visão tradicional que observa o lixo unicamente como um resultado. Na realidade, o lixo reporta a um processo, a um dinamismo cujo monitoramento não tem como ser bem sucedido atendo-se a ele enquanto um resultado final. Objetivamente, o importante é pensar as causas, origem dos problemas – e não o fim da linha.

IHU On-Line – Quais são os principais fatores que envolvem o gerenciamento do lixo no plano municipal?

Maurício Waldman – Entendo que existem duas diretrizes matriciais: uma de índole filosófica, que seria o caso, por exemplo, dos quatro “Rs” e outra, atinente aos aspectos logísticos de gestão do lixo. De qualquer modo, assevere-se que nosso temário é o lixo brasileiro, que é dotado de uma série de especificidades que devem estar colocadas no centro das atenções. Em nome dessas peculiaridades que o trabalho dos catadores deve, por exemplo, ser protegido, incentivado e valorizado pelas administrações municipais. Mas isso é o oposto do que acontece na maioria dos casos. Estigmatizados socialmente, o trabalho dos catadores – que corresponde a mais de 98% dos materiais encaminhados às recicladoras – segue, a despeito do seu enorme valor social e ambiental, repudiado, quando não hostilizado abertamente, pelas administrações municipais. É o que pondera nota oficial divulgada pelo Movimento Nacional dos Catadores de Materiais Recicláveis em 2010. O manifesto recorda que apenas 142 municípios em todo o país (2,5% do total) mantêm relação de parceria com associações e cooperativas de catadores. Tal situação requer revisão imediata.

IHU On-Line – Como estes fatores então devem ser levados em consideração?

Maurício Waldman – Entendo que o problema do lixo pode, ao menos, ser mitigado com o concurso de procedimentos inteligentes e práticas ambientalmente corretas. Um exemplo bem concreto: dependendo da bibliografia, o volume de detritos orgânicos no lixo domiciliar brasileiro pende entre 52% a 69,6% do total. Qual seja: independentemente da fonte, o que ninguém discute é a magnitude da fração úmida no lixo residencial. Normalmente, o sistema de limpeza urbana desova toda essa portentosa massa de sobras nos aterros. Mas existem outras soluções. Deveríamos priorizar a educação ambiental, trabalhar contra o desperdício.

Afinal, um documento da FAO (órgão da ONU relacionado com a alimentação e agricultura), datado de 2004, revela que o Brasil está entre os dez países que mais jogam comida no lixo, com perda média de 35% da produção agrícola. Segundo levantamentos, cada família brasileira desperdiça cerca de 20% dos alimentos que adquire no período de uma semana e a Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento – Conab estima perdas em grãos em torno de 10% da produção.

Outras avaliações indicam que praticamente 64% do que é cultivado no país acaba lançado na lata de lixo. Isso é um contrassenso manifesto numa nação rotineiramente assediada por campanhas de combate à fome. Portanto, devemos atacar a raiz do problema e parar de pensar que gestão dos resíduos se resume a tirar saquinho da calçada. A gestão dos resíduos deve se situar antes do saquinho, e não depois dele.

IHU On-Line – Mas ainda assim existirão sobras…

Maurício Waldman – Sem dúvida alguma. Inclusive aproveito o momento para questionar o conceito de Lixo Zero. Isso é uma mitologia, uma verdadeira peça de ficção. Toda atividade humana consome água, solicita energia e gera lixo. Essa ponderação vale inclusive para a atividade recicladora. Mas se eliminar lixo é uma afirmação insensata, por outro lado é perfeitamente possível pautar a redução dos rejeitos.

Retomando o caso do lixo culinário, o meio ambiente e as cidades lucrariam muito mais na hipótese de se universalizar a compostagem doméstica do que ficar investindo em caros sistemas de logística de coleta de resíduos, em aterros e incineradores. Com a adoção de minhocários domésticos, a redução do lixo orgânico pode alcançar a proporção de 95% do total. Isso significa que os gastos com coleta de lixo urbano podem retrair em até 50%. Consequentemente, haveria grande economia para o erário público, propiciando mais verba para saúde e educação. Mesmo que apenas uma parcela da população adote o sistema, ainda assim os ganhos seriam consideráveis.

IHU On-Line – Que tipo de lixo é o grande vilão? O domiciliar é um dos maiores?

Maurício Waldman – O lixo jamais constitui vilão. Ele é transformado em um estorvo em razão do papel que os resíduos assumiram na nossa civilização. Como recorda o geógrafo francês Jean Gottman, vivemos um período que poderia ser definido como a Era do Lixo. Esta é a primeira vez na história que os resíduos passaram a ocupar um nexo central nas preocupações humanas. Trata-se de um fato inédito cuja origem é o ineditismo de como os rejeitos são trabalhados pela modernidade.

Quanto à questão do lixo domiciliar faz-se importante lembrar – no que causaria espécie a um difuso senso comum – que os rejeitos residenciais perfazem não mais que 2,5% do total do lixo mundial. Na realidade, o que é descartado pelas residências é suplantado de longe, em ordem de importância, pelos rejeitos da mineração, da indústria e da agropecuária.

Note-se que esses três segmentos são responsáveis pela geração de aproximadamente 91% do lixo planetário, cabendo tanto para a pecuária quanto para a mineração algo mais que a terça parte do total, e para a agricultura cerca de 20%. Na sequência, temos o lixo industrial, com 4%, o entulho, com 3%, e os resíduos sólidos urbanos, com 2,5%.

Entretanto, caberia sublinhar que, embora o lixo domiciliar seja 2,5% nessa conta, processualmente é o mais importante de todos. Isso porque tudo ou quase tudo que se produz no mundo acaba descartado no saquinho que colocamos na calçada ou na lixeira do prédio.

O lixo domiciliar é o último elo de uma longa cadeia de geração de lixos. Segundo a ativista de sustentabilidade norte-americana, Annie Leonard, professora da Universidade Cornell, atrás de cada saquinho colocado na calçada existem 60 outros sacos de lixo descartados no processo da produção. Em resumo, o lixo domiciliar é o último avatar na ciranda da geração de lixos.

IHU On-Line – Quanto lixo é gerado nos municípios brasileiros e o que é feito com ele?

Maurício Waldman – Os dados compilados mais recentes são de 2008. Constam na Pesquisa Nacional de Saneamento Básico – PNSB, um trabalho do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – IBGE. Segundo este levantamento, em 2008 eram coletados 183,5 mil toneladas/dia de resíduos sólidos urbanos. Importa esclarecer que para o PNSB a categoria lixo urbano subentende os refugos procedentes do âmbito domiciliar e do comércio e atividades de serviços.

De qualquer modo – para além dos dados impressionantes dos números do IBGE –, a situação da gestão do lixo preocupa no aspecto qualitativo. Por exemplo, na capital paulista cerca de 35% do lixo obtido pela coleta seletiva da administração municipal – que sendo materiais já segregados deveriam ser 100% reaproveitados – é encaminhado para aterros devido a falhas operacionais e logísticas do sistema.

Mesmo Curitiba – cidade icônica em termos de reciclagem – 60% dos materiais desovados nos aterros seriam itens passíveis de reciclabilidade. Em termos técnicos, não há nenhuma cidade de porte no Brasil com reciclagem em termos de excelência. Ademais, no país 60,5% dos municípios descartam lixo de modo inadequado. Para complicar, mais de 6,4 milhões de toneladas sequer são coletadas, sendo despejadas irregularmente ao longo das vias urbanas, em córregos, praias, etc.

Na área rural, a coleta alcança apenas 33% dos domicílios. Ainda com base no PNSB, o documento revela que em 80% do território nacional existem lixões e aterros controlados (na verdade, “lixões melhorados”), sendo que isso acontece justamente nas áreas de maior interesse ambiental: Amazônia, Pantanal, áreas de mangue, cerrado, etc.

IHU On-Line – Qual sua opinião sobre os aterros sanitários como destino do lixo? É a melhor alternativa?

Maurício Waldman – É óbvio que, sendo impossível existir uma sociedade sem resíduos, há um momento no qual o lixo deve ser encaminhando para algum tipo de disposição final.

É importante frisar que o aterro sanitário ao menos atenua alguns dos agravantes relacionados com a disposição irregular dos detritos.

Reconhecidamente, o lixo domiciliar origina efluentes líquidos (chorume) e gasosos (metano), que constituem complicadores ambientais de monta. O chorume é 200 vezes mais impactante que o esgoto quanto à demanda bioquímica de oxigênio (DBO). Em suma, atua como poderoso elemento destrutivo das águas doces. Quanto ao metano, trata-se de item crucial da agenda das mudanças climáticas.

Ainda que as emissões de metano sejam inferiores às do dióxido de carbono (tido como carro-chefe do efeito estufa), seu efeito é consideravelmente maior: cerca de 20 vezes mais. A discussão relacionada com o metano conquista relevância especial pelo fato deste gás ser dotado de preocupante implicação quanto ao aquecimento global. Acredita-se que no Brasil o lixo domiciliar, devido ao elevado teor de matéria orgânica, represente 12% das emissões brasileiras do gás, sendo que a disposição final responde por 84% desse valor. Ora, ao menos os aterros sanitários drenam o metano e coletam o chorume. Outro detalhe importante é que as áreas eleitas para acolherem aterros sanitários requisitam estudos geotécnicos e medidas de implantação precisas e rigorosas.

Em 2008, existiam 1.723 destes equipamentos em operação no Brasil, recebendo 110 mil toneladas/dia de lixo: 58,3% do total nacional. Contudo, advirta-se que, apesar do rigor técnico sugerido pelos aterros sanitários, o modelo incorpora diversos questionamentos, a começar por obrigar a seleção de vastas áreas de terreno – cada vez mais escassas em todo o mundo – exclusivamente para confinar rejeitos. Outro dado é que a pontuação do aterro depende de pessoal técnico qualificado, o que não necessariamente está à disposição. Por fim, os aterros reclamam verbas pesadas para enterrar materiais cuja produção requisitou água, energia, recursos naturais e trabalho humano, um contrassenso a toda prova.

IHU On-Line – E o que dizer dos chamados vazadouros a céu aberto, ou simplesmente lixões? Quais os danos que eles provocam ao meio ambiente e à saúde humana?

Maurício Waldman – Sem meias palavras, o lixão é um verdadeiro caso de polícia. As áreas de lixão no país exibem o que de pior existe na “não gestão” dos rebotalhos. Entre outros problemas temos emissões de chorume e de gás metano sem controle, insetos e toda uma fauna transmissora de doenças, ameaças ao meio ambiente e à população em geral. Essa é a sintomatologia de um lixão. Há aproximadamente 12 mil lixões em atividade ou desativados no território nacional.

Nesse sentido, importaria assinalar que a tão propalada Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos – PNRS de 2010, embora tenha por meta a extirpação do lixão como “equipamento” para confinamento dos resíduos, foi antecedida neste mister pela Lei de Crimes Ambientais de 1998. Para esta legislação, a deposição de resíduos a céu aberto já era considerada ilegal. Mas pelo jeito, foi uma lei que “não pegou”.

Para complicar, não obstante a apologia que muitos técnicos do Ministério do Meio Ambiente teceram com abnegação inconsequente ao longo de 2010 quanto ao PNRS, existe o fato concreto de que até este momento, apenas 10% dos municípios elaboraram planos de gestão de resíduos. É um fato que preocupa, e muito, todos os especialistas da “lixologia”. Em especial, os que querem ver a erradicação final dos lixões no Brasil.

IHU On-Line – Qual a importância da reciclagem do lixo como alternativa para o problema?

Maurício Waldman – Essa pergunta é instigante, tanto pelo fato da reciclagem ser uma estratégia matricial na minimização dos impactos provocados pela verdadeira avalanche de lixo que está dominando o planeta quanto pelas próprias limitações da atividade recicladora – no que pode surpreender muitos leitores desta entrevista.

Importa esclarecer os seguintes fatos: primeiro, que nas condições como a sociedade e a economia globais estão hoje estruturadas a reciclagem não tem como deter a disseminação do lixo e tampouco impor recuos na expansão dos rebotalhos; segundo, a reciclagem tem se articulado com a dinâmica maior do sistema de produção de mercadorias responsável pela depleção dos recursos naturais e gerador de rejeitos.

Ou seja, foi cooptada pela lógica da produção incessante; terceiro, a reciclagem não contesta a espiral de consumo e apenas a apresenta sob nova roupagem, agora adornada com afetações ambientais e beatificada pelo evangelho do desenvolvimento sustentável. Em síntese, a reciclagem, conforme já sugeri, é somente o último dos quatro Rs. É antecedida em ordem de importância por repensar, reduzir e reutilizar.

IHU On-Line – É viável apostar nela, considerando a sociedade capitalista em que vivemos, onde tudo deve gerar lucro, até o lixo?

Maurício Waldman – Viável ela é e deve ser incentivada. Outra coisa é transformá-la no ícone da defesa do meio ambiente, o que simplesmente não é correto. É preciso rubricar que a ciranda do sistema produtivo, articulada com o que denominei no meu livro Lixo: cenários e desafios, como “cornucópia dos lixos”, tem objetivamente nivelado a zero os ganhos advindos com a recuperação dos materiais.

Exemplificando, embora no caso do papel a atividade recicladora tenha imposto certa desaceleração no crescimento da demanda por polpa de madeira, ela serviu bem mais como complemento do que substituto para a fibra virgem. Sabidamente, nunca se produziu tanta celulose na história humana quanto nos dias atuais. O consumo de materiais celulósicos cresce num nível tão rápido que suplanta a possível poupança de recursos promovida pela recuperação dos papeis.

Outros itens de resíduos repetem o mesmo tipo de desempenho no contexto maior da engenharia econômica. Exemplificando, no Japão, entre 1966 e o ano 2000 a reciclagem do plástico PET cresceu 40%. Todavia, neste mesmo lapso de tempo o consumo duplicou, cancelando o quinhão de benefícios providos pela recuperação desta sucata. O resgate de metal das lixeiras também não consegue acompanhar o ritmo alucinante de consumo de cargas sequestradas do reino mineral.

A produção de aço secundário (metal refundido proveniente da reciclagem) atinge 35% da produção mundial total.

Mas os números globais não param de crescer. Assim, se em 1950 as siderúrgicas produziam 189 milhões de toneladas de aço, em 2008 a produção alcançou 1,3 bilhões de toneladas, quase sete vezes mais. Em tempo, precisamos acima de tudo repensar o conjunto da sociedade contemporânea.

IHU On-Line – Gostaria de acrescentar mais algum comentário?

Maurício Waldman – Sim. Gostaria de destacar que a discussão do lixo põe em xeque a civilização do lixo, impondo uma revolução completa da forma como são produzidas as coisas, como são consumidas e como são descartadas. Cada um de nós deve fazer sua parte sabendo que toda contribuição é necessária e indispensável. É uma tarefa difícil, mas não impossível. Atentemos para as palavras do ambientalista Paul Hawken: “Não se deixem dissuadir por pessoas que não sabem o que não é possível. Façam o que precisa ser feito, e verifiquem se era impossível exclusivamente depois que tiverem terminado”. É isso: sigamos em frente!

* Publicado originalmente no site IHU-Online.

Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial (Slate)

04/12/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

By Phil Plait

Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, at 8:00 AM ET

Graphic of Earth on fire Oh, those wacky professional climate change deniers! Once again, they’ve banded together a passel of people, 90 percent of whom aren’t even climatologists, and had them sign a nearly fact-free opinion piece in the Financial Post, claiming global warming isn’t real. It’s an astonishing example of nonsense so ridiculous I would run out of synonyms for “bilge” before adequately describing it.

The Op-Ed is directed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has recently, and thankfully, been vocal about the looming environmental catastrophe of global warming. The deniers’ letter takes him to task for this, but doesn’t come within a glancing blow of reality.

The letter itself is based on a single claim. So let’s be clear: If that claim is wrong, so is the rest of the letter.

Guess what? That claim is wrong. So blatantly wrong, in fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone could write it with a straight face. It says:

“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”

This is simply, completely, and utterly false. The Met Office is the national weather service for the United Kingdom. In October 2012, they updated their database of global surface temperature measurements, a compendium of temperatures taken over time by weather stations around the planet. David Rose, a climate change denier who can charitably be said to have trouble with facts, cherry-picked this dataset and published a horrendously misleading graph in that bastion of scientific thought, the Daily Mail, saying the measurements show there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years.

But he did this by choosing a starting point on his graph that gave the result he wanted, a graph that looks like there’s been no warming since 1997. But if you show the data properly, you see there has been warming:

Graph showing how the Earth is warming up.

Global surface temperatures from the Met Office data. Top: Fiction. Bottom: Fact.

Image credit: David Rose/Daily Mail (top), Tamino (bottom).

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000. On top of that, Rose was using global surface temperatures, which don’t really represent global overall heat content well; most of the heating is going into ocean waters. So the data he’s displaying so awfully isn’t even the right data to make his claim anyway!

So the very first basis of this denial letter is total garbage, and was such an egregious manipulation of the U.K. Met Office data that the Met Office itself issued a debunking of it! Yet here were are, months later, with the deniers still ignoring facts.

The letter is chock full of more such falsehoods. If you want the rundown, please go readthe great article on Skeptical Science destroying this nonsense. Full disclosure: I had already written quite a bit more for this post before seeing the one at Skeptical Science, and decided it would be better to send readers there for more rather than debunk all the wrongness here. I’m pleased to note they found the same examples of misleading or outright false statements in the deniers’ article and debunked them the same way I had.

I do want to add something, though. I’ll note that it seems superficially impressive that they got 125 scientists, “qualified in climate-related matters” as they claim, to sign this letter.

Yeah, about that…

First, not everyone signing that letter is a scientist. Lord Monckton, for example, apparently has no formal scientific training, has some trouble with the truth, and oh, by the way, claims Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. He’s the last guy I’d want signing a letter I was on. Yet he seems to pop up on every denialist list as a go-to guy.

Here’s another: The very first signatory, Hhabibullo Abdusamatov, claims that global warming is caused by the Sun, which is patently and provably false (see that Skeptical Science link for more). Many of the claims Abdusamatov makes (as listed on his Wikipedia page) are, um, not accepted by mainstream science, to be very charitable.

Going down the list of signatories I was struck by how many are not, in fact, climate scientists (again, for examples with references, see Skeptical Science); I counted a dozen who actually have climatology in their listed credentials. It’s kinda weird to write such a big letter and then only have fewer than 10 percent of the signers actually be credentialed in the field.

Of course, I’m not a climatologist either, though I am an astronomer classically trained in science, and that means I know enough to rely on the combined research of actual climate scientists from around the world. And when thousands upon thousands of such scientists— in fact, 98 percent of actual, bona fide climate scientists—say global warming is real, well then, that strikes me as being somewhat more credible than a hundred or so politically and ideologically driven non-climate-scientists.

I’ll note this isn’t the first time a laughably-wrong article has been printed by right-leaning venues and signed by multiple, similarly-inappropriate authors. The Wall Street Journalposted one in January 2012 (while turning down an article supporting the reality of global warming signed by 255 actual scientists), and in April 2012, another made the roundsthat was signed by 49 people, including some ex-NASA astronauts, but again, none who actually were climate scientists.

So we can expect to see more of this. Clearly, when you don’t have facts to support your claims, the best thing to do is make as much noise as possible to distract from reality. And that reality is that the world is getting hotter, and unless we do something, now, we’re facing a world of trouble.

Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists (Financial Post) + EANTH list reactions

01/12/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, comunicação científica, Desastre, Incerteza, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.

Special to Financial Post | Nov 29, 2012 8:36 PM ET | Last Updated:Nov 30, 2012 12:11 PM ET

Getty – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon

Policy actions that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to influence future climate. Policies need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events, however caused

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations. First Avenue and East 44^th Street, New York, New York, U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General:

On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”

The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.

The “even larger climate shocks” you have mentioned would be worse if the world cooled than if it warmed. Climate changes naturally all the time, sometimes dramatically. The hypothesis that our emissions of CO₂ have caused, or will cause, dangerous warming is not supported by the evidence.

The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date. The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.

There is no sound reason for the costly, restrictive public policy decisions proposed at the U.N. climate conference in Qatar. Rigorous analysis of unbiased observational data does not support the projections of future global warming predicted by computer models now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects.

The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.

Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO₂ emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.

Signed by:

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Dr. Sci., mathematician and astrophysicist, Head of the Selenometria project on the Russian segment of the ISS, Head of Space Research of the Sun Sector at the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, PhD, Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Founding Director, International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A.
Bjarne Andresen, Dr. Scient., physicist, published and presents on the impossibility of a “global temperature”, Professor, Niels Bohr Institute (physics (thermodynamics) and chemistry), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
J. Scott Armstrong, PhD, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Founder of the International Journal of Forecasting, focus on analyzing climate forecasts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant and former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
James R. Barrante, Ph.D. (chemistry, Harvard University), Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry, Southern Connecticut State University, focus on studying the greenhouse gas behavior of CO2, Cheshire, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Colin Barton, B.Sc., PhD (Earth Science, Birmingham, U.K.), FInstEng Aus Principal research scientist (ret.), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Joe Bastardi, BSc, (Meteorology, Pennsylvania State), meteorologist, State College, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Franco Battaglia, PhD (Chemical Physics), Professor of Physics and Environmental Chemistry, University of Modena, Italy
Richard Becherer, BS (Physics, Boston College), MS (Physics, University of Illinois), PhD (Optics, University of Rochester), former Member of the Technical Staff – MIT Lincoln Laboratory, former Adjunct Professor – University of Connecticut, Areas of Specialization: optical radiation physics, coauthor – standard reference book Optical Radiation Measurements: Radiometry, Millis, MA, U.S.A.
Edwin X. Berry, PhD (Atmospheric Physics, Nevada), MA (Physics, Dartmouth), BS (Engineering, Caltech), Certified Consulting Meteorologist, President, Climate Physics LLC, Bigfork, MT, U.S.A.
Ian Bock, BSc, PhD, DSc, Biological sciences (retired), Ringkobing, Denmark
Ahmed Boucenna, PhD, Professor of Physics (strong climate focus), Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Ferhat Abbas University, Setif, Algéria
Antonio Brambati, PhD, Emeritus Professor (sedimentology), Department of Geological, Environmental and Marine Sciences (DiSGAM), University of Trieste (specialization: climate change as determined by Antarctic marine sediments), Trieste, Italy
Stephen C. Brown, PhD (Environmental Science, State University of New York), District Agriculture Agent, Assistant Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ground Penetrating Radar Glacier research, Palmer, Alaska, U.S.A.
Mark Lawrence Campbell, PhD (chemical physics; gas-phase kinetic research involving greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide)), Professor, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.A.
Rudy Candler, PhD (Soil Chemistry, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)), former agricultural laboratory manager, School of Agriculture and Land Resources Management, UAF, co-authored papers regarding humic substances and potential CO2 production in the Arctic due to decomposition, Union, Oregon, U.S.A.
Alan Carlin, B.S. (California Institute of Technology), PhD (economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), retired senior analyst and manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, former Chairman of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club (recipient of the Chapter’s Weldon Heald award for conservation work), U.S.A.
Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., Arctic Animal Behavioural Ecologist, wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Turner Valley, Alberta, Canada
Robert M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Uberto Crescenti, PhD, Full Professor of Applied Geology, Università G. d’Annunzio, Past President Società Geologica taliana, Chieti, Italy
Arthur Chadwick, PhD (Molecular Biology), Research Professor of Geology, Department of Biology and Geology, Southwestern Adventist University, Climate Specialties: dendrochronology (determination of past climate states by tree ring analysis), palynology (same but using pollen as a climate proxy), paleobotany and botany; Keene, Texas, U.S.A.
George V. Chilingar, PhD, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Engineering (CO2/temp. focused research), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor (isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology), Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Cornelia Codreanova, Diploma in Geography, Researcher (Areas of Specialization: formation of glacial lakes) at Liberec University, Czech Republic, Zwenkau, Germany
Michael Coffman, PhD (Ecosystems Analysis and Climate Influences, University of Idaho), CEO of Sovereignty International, President of Environmental Perspectives, Inc., Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.
Piers Corbyn, ARCS, MSc (Physics, Imperial College London)), FRAS, FRMetS, astrophysicist (Queen Mary College, London), consultant, founder WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters, American Thinker Climate Forecaster of The Year 2010, London, United Kingdom
Richard S. Courtney, PhD, energy and environmental consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Roger W. Cohen, B.S., M.S., PhD Physics, MIT and Rutgers University, Fellow, American Physical Society, initiated and managed for more than twenty years the only industrial basic research program in climate, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Susan Crockford, PhD (Zoology/Evolutionary Biology/Archaeozoology), Adjunct Professor (Anthropology/Faculty of Graduate Studies), University of Victoria, Victoria, British Colombia, Canada
Walter Cunningham, B.S., M.S. (Physics – Institute of Geophysics And Planetary Sciences, UCLA), AMP – Harvard Graduate School of Business, Colonel (retired) U.S. Marine Corps, Apollo 7 Astronaut., Fellow – AAS, AIAA; Member AGU, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
Joseph D’Aleo, BS, MS (Meteorology, University of Wisconsin), Doctoral Studies (NYU), CMM, AMS Fellow, Executive Director – ICECAP (International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project), College Professor Climatology/Meteorology, First Director of Meteorology The Weather Channel, Hudson, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Professor of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
James E. Dent; B.Sc., FCIWEM, C.Met, FRMetS, C.Env., Independent Consultant (hydrology & meteorology), Member of WMO OPACHE Group on Flood Warning, Hadleigh, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom
Willem de Lange, MSc (Hons), DPhil (Computer and Earth Sciences), Senior Lecturer in Earth and Ocean Sciences, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Silvia Duhau, Ph.D. (physics), Solar Terrestrial Physics, Buenos Aires University, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Geoff Duffy, DEng (Dr of Engineering), PhD (Chemical Engineering), BSc, ASTCDip. (first chemical engineer to be a Fellow of the Royal Society in NZ), FIChemE, wide experience in radiant heat transfer and drying, chemical equilibria, etc. Has reviewed, analysed, and written brief reports and papers on climate change, Auckland, New Zealand
Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington, University, Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A.
Ole Henrik Ellestad, former Research Director, applied chemistry SINTEF, Professor in physical chemistry, University of Oslo, Managing director Norsk Regnesentral and Director for Science and Technology, Norwegian Research Council, widely published in infrared spectroscopy, Oslo, Norway
Per Engene, MSc, Biologist, Co-author – The Climate, Science and Politics (2009), Bø i Telemark, Norway
Gordon Fulks, B.S., M.S., PhD (Physics, University of Chicago), cosmic radiation, solar wind, electromagnetic and geophysical phenomena, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
Katya Georgieva, MSc (meteorology), PhD (solar-terrestrial climate physics), Professor, Space Research and Technologies Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas, past director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey, U.S.A.
Ivar Giaever PhD, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1973, professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, Applied BioPhysics, Troy, New York, U.S.A.
Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, ScAgr, Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, Tropical pasture research and land use management, Director científico de INTTAS, Loma Plata, Paraguay
Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adj Professor, Royal Institute of Technology (Mech, Eng.), Secretary General KTH International Climate Seminar 2006 and Climate analyst (NIPCC), Lidingö, Sweden
Laurence I. Gould, PhD, Professor of Physics, University of Hartford, Past Chair (2004), New England Section of the American Physical Society, West Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Vincent Gray, PhD, New Zealand Climate Coalition, expert reviewer for the IPCC, author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
William M. Gray, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project, Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A.
Charles B. Hammons, PhD (Applied Mathematics), climate-related specialties: applied mathematics, modeling & simulation, software & systems engineering, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Management, University of Dallas; Assistant Professor, North Texas State University (Dr. Hammons found many serious flaws during a detailed study of the software, associated control files plus related email traffic of the Climate Research Unit temperature and other records and “adjustments” carried out in support of IPCC conclusions), Coyle, OK, U.S.A.
William Happer, PhD, Professor, Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A.
Hermann Harde, PhD, Professur f. Lasertechnik & Werkstoffkunde (specialized in molecular spectroscopy, development of gas sensors and CO₂-climate sensitivity), Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Universität der Bundeswehr Fakultät für Elektrotechnik, Hamburg, Germany
Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor (Physics), University of Connecticut, The Energy Advocate, Pueblo West, Colorado, U.S.A.
Ross Hays, Meteorologist, atmospheric scientist, NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (currently working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica), Palestine, Texas, U.S.A.
Martin Hovland, M.Sc. (meteorology, University of Bergen), PhD (Dr Philos, University of Tromsø), FGS, Emeritus Professor, Geophysics, Centre for Geobiology, University of Bergen, member of the expert panel: Environmental Protection and Safety Panel (EPSP) for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and the Integrated ODP, Stavanger, Norway
Ole Humlum, PhD, Professor of Physical Geography, Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
Larry Irons, BS (Geology), MS (Geology), Sr. Geophysicist at Fairfield Nodal (specialization: paleoclimate), Lakewood, Colorado, U.S.A.
Terri Jackson, MSc (plasma physics), MPhil (energy economics), Director, Independent Climate Research Group, Northern Ireland and London (Founder of the energy/climate group at the Institute of Physics, London), United Kingdom
Albert F. Jacobs, Geol.Drs., P. Geol., Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Hans Jelbring, PhD Climatology, Stockholm University, MSc Electronic engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, BSc Meteorology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Bill Kappel, B.S. (Physical Science-Geology), B.S. (Meteorology), Storm Analysis, Climatology, Operation Forecasting, Vice President/Senior Meteorologist, Applied Weather Associates, LLC, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, U.S.A.
Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Extraordinary Research Associate; Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Tartu Observatory, Toravere, Estonia
Leonid F. Khilyuk, PhD, Science Secretary, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Professor of Engineering (CO2/temp. focused research), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
William Kininmonth MSc, MAdmin, former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization’s Commission for Climatology, Kew, Victoria, Australia
Gerhard Kramm, Dr. rer. nat. (Theoretical Meteorology), Research Associate Professor, Geophysical Institute, Associate Faculty, College of Natural Science and Mathematics, University of Alaska Fairbanks, (climate specialties: Atmospheric energetics, physics of the atmospheric boundary layer, physical climatology – seeinteresting paper by Kramm et al), Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A.
Leif Kullman, PhD (Physical geography, plant ecology, landscape ecology), Professor, Physical geography, Department of Ecology and Environmental science, Umeå University, Areas of Specialization: Paleoclimate (Holocene to the present), glaciology, vegetation history, impact of modern climate on the living landscape, Umeå, Sweden
Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, Independent economist, author specialised in climate issues, IPCC expert reviewer, author of Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma and climate science-related Blog, The Netherlands
Rune Berg-Edland Larsen, PhD (Geology, Geochemistry), Professor, Dep. Geology and Geoengineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
C. (Kees) le Pair, PhD (Physics Leiden, Low Temperature Physics), former director of the Netherlands Research Organization FOM (fundamental physics) and subsequently founder and director of The Netherlands Technology Foundation STW. Served the Dutch Government many years as member of its General Energy Council and of the National Defense Research Council. Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences Honorary Medal and honorary doctorate in all technical sciences of the Delft University of technology, Nieuwegein, The Netherlands
Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, past President – Friends of Science, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Jay Lehr, B.Eng. (Princeton), PhD (environmental science and ground water hydrology), Science Director, The Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Bryan Leyland, M.Sc., FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ, MRSNZ, consulting engineer (power), Energy Issues Advisor – International Climate Science Coalition, Auckland, New Zealand
Edward Liebsch, B.A. (Earth Science, St. Cloud State University); M.S. (Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University), former Associate Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; former Adjunct Professor of Meteorology, St. Cloud State University, Environmental Consultant/Air Quality Scientist (Areas of Specialization: micrometeorology, greenhouse gas emissions), Maple Grove, Minnesota, U.S.A.
William Lindqvist, PhD (Applied Geology), Independent Geologic Consultant, Areas of Specialization: Climate Variation in the recent geologic past, Tiburon, California, U.S.A.
Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Prof. Dr. , PhD (Physics), retired from university of appl. sciences HTW, Saarbrücken (Germany), atmospheric temperature research, speaker of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Heidelberg, Germany
Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Science, Department of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, U.S.A.
Oliver Manuel, BS, MS, PhD, Post-Doc (Space Physics), Associate – Climate & Solar Science Institute, Emeritus Professor, College of Arts & Sciences University of Missouri-Rolla, previously Research Scientist (US Geological Survey) and NASA Principal Investigator for Apollo, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, U.S.A.
Francis Massen, professeur-docteur en physique (PhD equivalent, Universities of Nancy (France) and Liège (Belgium), Manager of the Meteorological Station of the Lycée Classique de Diekirch, specialising in the measurement of solar radiation and atmospheric gases. Collaborator to the WOUDC (World Ozone and UV Radiation Data Center), Diekirch, Luxembourg
Henri Masson, Prof. dr. ir., Emeritus Professor University of Antwerp (Energy & Environment Technology Management), Visiting professor Maastricht School of Management, specialist in dynamical (chaotic) complex system analysis, Antwerp, Belgium.
Ferenc Mark Miskolczi, PhD, atmospheric physicist, formerly of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.A.
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Expert reviewer, IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Quantification of Climate Sensitivity, Carie, Rannoch, Scotland
Nils-Axel Mörner, PhD (Sea Level Changes and Climate), Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
John Nicol, PhD (Physics, James Cook University), Chairman – Australian climate Science Coalition, Brisbane, Australia
Ingemar Nordin, PhD, professor in philosophy of science (including a focus on “Climate research, philosophical and sociological aspects of a politicised research area”), Linköpings University, Sweden.
David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Cliff Ollier, D.Sc., Professor Emeritus (School of Earth and Environment – see hisCopenhagen Climate Challenge sea level article here), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, W.A., Australia
Oleg M. Pokrovsky, BS, MS, PhD (mathematics and atmospheric physics – St. Petersburg State University, 1970), Dr. in Phys. and Math Sciences (1985), Professor in Geophysics (1995), principal scientist, Main Geophysical Observatory (RosHydroMet), Note: Dr. Pokrovsky analyzed long climates and concludes that anthropogenic CO2 impact is not the main contributor in climate change,St. Petersburg, Russia.
Daniel Joseph Pounder, BS (Meteorology, University of Oklahoma), MS (Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Meteorological/Oceanographic Data Analyst for the National Data Buoy Center, formerly Meteorologist, WILL AM/FM/TV, Urbana, U.S.A.
Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology (Sedimentology), University of Saskatchewan (see Professor Pratt’s article for a summary of his views), Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Professore-emeritus isotope-geophysics and planetary geology, Utrecht University, past director ZWO/NOW Institute of Isotope Geophysical Research, Past-President Royal Netherlands Society of Geology and Mining, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Oleg Raspopov, Doctor of Science and Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Professor – Geophysics, Senior Scientist, St. Petersburg Filial (Branch) of N.V.Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowaves Propagation of RAS (climate specialty: climate in the past, particularly the influence of solar variability), Editor-in-Chief of journal “Geomagnetism and Aeronomy” (published by Russian Academy of Sciences), St. Petersburg, Russia
Curt G. Rose, BA, MA (University of Western Ontario), MA, PhD (Clark University), Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Studies and Geography, Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
S. Jeevananda Reddy, M.Sc. (Geophysics), Post Graduate Diploma (Applied Statistics, Andhra University), PhD (Agricultural Meteorology, Australian University, Canberra), Formerly Chief Technical Advisor—United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) & Expert-Food and Agriculture Organization (UN), Convener – Forum for a Sustainable Environment, author of 500 scientific articles and several books – here is one: “Climate Change – Myths & Realities“, Hyderabad, India
Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, former member of the board of management of the Netherlands Organization Applied Research TNO, Leiden, The Netherlands
Rob Scagel, MSc (forest microclimate specialist), Principal Consultant – Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Chris Schoneveld, MSc (Structural Geology), PhD (Geology), retired exploration geologist and geophysicist, Australia and France
Tom V. Segalstad, PhD (Geology/Geochemistry), Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, former IPCC expert reviewer, former Head of the Geological Museum, and former head of the Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden (UO), Oslo, Norway
John Shade, BS (Physics), MS (Atmospheric Physics), MS (Applied Statistics), Industrial Statistics Consultant, GDP, Dunfermline, Scotland, United Kingdom
Thomas P. Sheahen, B.S., PhD (Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), specialist in renewable energy, research and publication (applied optics) in modeling and measurement of absorption of infrared radiation by atmospheric CO2, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (2005-2009); Argonne National Laboratory (1988-1992); Bell Telephone labs (1966-73), National Bureau of Standards (1975-83), Oakland, Maryland, U.S.A.
S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Environmental Sciences), University of Virginia, former director, U.S. Weather Satellite Service, Science and Environmental Policy Project, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
Frans W. Sluijter, Prof. dr ir, Emeritus Professor of theoretical physics, Technical University Eindhoven, Chairman—Skepsis Foundation, former vice-president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, former President of the Division on Plasma Physics of the European Physical Society and former bureau member of the Scientific Committee on Sun-Terrestrial Physics, Euvelwegen, the Netherlands
Jan-Erik Solheim, MSc (Astrophysics), Professor, Institute of Physics, University of Tromsø, Norway (1971-2002), Professor (emeritus), Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway (1965-1970, 2002- present), climate specialties: sun and periodic climate variations, scientific paper by Professor Solheim “Solen varsler et kaldere tiår“, Baerum, Norway
H. Leighton Steward, Master of Science (Geology), Areas of Specialization: paleoclimates and empirical evidence that indicates CO2 is not a significant driver of climate change, Chairman, PlantsNeedCO2.org and CO2IsGreen.org, Chairman of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man (geology, archeology & anthropology) at SMU in Dallas, Texas, Boerne, TX, U.S.A.
Arlin B. Super, PhD (Meteorology – University of Wisconsin at Madison), former Professor of Meteorology at Montana State University, retired Research Meteorologist, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Saint Cloud, Minnesota, U.S.A.
Edward (Ted) R. Swart, D.Sc. (physical chemistry, University of Pretoria), M.Sc. and Ph.D. (math/computer science, University of Witwatersrand). Formerly Director of the Gulbenkian Centre, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science, University of Rhodesia and past President of the Rhodesia Scientific Association. Set up the first radiocarbon dating laboratory in Africa. Most recently, Professor in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo and Chair of Computing and Information Science and Acting Dean at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, now retired in Kelowna British Columbia, Canada
George H. Taylor, B.A. (Mathematics, U.C. Santa Barbara), M.S. (Meteorology, University of Utah), Certified Consulting Meteorologist, Applied Climate Services, LLC, Former State Climatologist (Oregon), President, American Association of State Climatologists (1998-2000), Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.
J. E. Tilsley, P.Eng., BA Geol, Acadia University, 53 years of climate and paleoclimate studies related to development of economic mineral deposits, Aurora, Ontario, Canada
Göran Tullberg, Civilingenjör i Kemi (equivalent to Masters of Chemical Engineering), Co-author – The Climate, Science and Politics (2009) (see here for a review), formerly instructor of Organic Chemistry (specialization in “Climate chemistry”), Environmental Control and Environmental Protection Engineering at University in Växjö; Falsterbo, Sweden
Brian Gregory Valentine, PhD, Adjunct professor of engineering (aero and fluid dynamics specialization) at the University of Maryland, Technical manager at US Department of Energy, for large-scale modeling of atmospheric pollution, Technical referee for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science programs in climate and atmospheric modeling conducted at American Universities and National Labs, Washington, DC, U.S.A.
Bas van Geel, PhD, paleo-climatologist, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, Research Group Paleoecology and Landscape Ecology, Faculty of Science, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD (Utrecht University), geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, Nelson, New Zealand
A.J. (Tom) van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geologyspecialism: Glacial Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, former President of the European Association of Science Editors Poznan, Poland
Fritz Vahrenholt, B.S. (chemistry), PhD (chemistry), Prof. Dr., Professor of Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Former Senator for environmental affairs of the State of Hamburg, former CEO of REpower Systems AG (wind turbines), Author of the book Die kalte Sonne: warum die Klimakatastrophe nicht stattfindet (The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Crisis Isn’t Happening”, Hamburg, Germany
Michael G. Vershovsky, Ph.D. in meteorology (macrometeorology, long-term forecasts, climatology), Senior Researcher, Russian State Hydrometeorological University, works with, as he writes, “Atmospheric Centers of Action (cyclones and anticyclones, such as Icelandic depression, the South Pacific subtropical anticyclone, etc.). Changes in key parameters of these centers strongly indicate that the global temperature is influenced by these natural factors (not exclusively but nevertheless)”, St. Petersburg, Russia
Gösta Walin, PhD and Docent (theoretical Physics, University of Stockholm), Professor Emeritus in oceanografi, Earth Science Center, Göteborg University, Göteborg, Sweden
Anthony Watts, ItWorks/IntelliWeather, Founder, surfacestations.org, Watts Up With That, Chico, California, U.S.A.
Carl Otto Weiss, Direktor und Professor at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Visiting Professor at University of Copenhagen, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Coauthor of ”Multiperiodic Climate Dynamics: Spectral Analysis of…“, Braunschweig, Germany
Forese-Carlo Wezel, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Stratigraphy (global and Mediterranean geology, mass biotic extinctions and paleoclimatology), University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy
Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
David E. Wojick, PhD, PE, energy and environmental consultant, Technical Advisory Board member – Climate Science Coalition of America, Star Tannery, Virginia, U.S.A.
George T. Wolff, Ph.D., Principal Atmospheric Scientist, Air Improvement Resource, Inc., Novi, Michigan, U.S.A.
Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller –NASA (Ret) ARC, GSFC, Hdq. – Meteorologist, Ogunquit, ME, U.S.A.
Bob Zybach, PhD (Environmental Sciences, Oregon State University), climate-related carbon sequestration research, MAIS, B.S., Director, Environmental Sciences Institute Peer review Institute, Cottage Grove, Oregon, U.S.A.
Milap Chand Sharma, PhD, Associate Professor of Glacial Geomorphology, Centre fort the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Valentin A. Dergachev, PhD, Professor and Head of the Cosmic Ray Laboratory at Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
Vijay Kumar Raina, Ex-Deputy Director General, Geological Survey of India, Ex-Chairman Project Advisory and Monitoring Committee on Himalayan glacier, DST, Govt. of India and currently Member Expert Committee on Climate Change Programme, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, author of 2010 MoEF Discussion Paper, “Himalayan Glaciers – State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change”, the first comprehensive study on the region. Winner of the Indian Antarctica Award, Chandigarh, India
Scott Chesner, B.S. (Meteorology, Penn State University), KETK Chief Meteorologist, KETK TV, previously Meteorologist with Accu Weather, Tyler, Texas, U.S.A

* * *

Reactions (I will not mention names here; all are from emails in the EANTH list)

1) “Hmm, I clicked on a few links, googled a few names. Found that when one is listed as “author of x book”, said book doesn’t appear on Amazon, etc.

Many non-PhDs.

Many “consultants”. Losts of “adjuncts”, lots of professor emeriti. someone listed as an “Extraordinary Research Associate”.

Little actual data. Few peer-reviewed research reports.

Didn’t recognize most of the names. Did recognize some “suspicious” ones (e.g., Tim Ball, a lovely [sic] Canadian).

Misrepresentation of the SREX report (quotation is a minor comment on a single point of many – page 280 of 594).

Link is to a letter published in the Financial Post, the business section of the National Post, the more rightward leaning of Canada’s 2 national papers. To give an indication, on the day in 2007 when the Nobel was awarded to IPCC and Gore, the headline on front page was “A Coup for Junk Science: Gaffe riddled work undeserving”.

Conclusion: don’t bother to click the link.”

2) “A few of the names on the list are also contained in table 3 of the 2012 Heartland Institute Proposed Budget (pages 7-8). Namely:

Craig D. Idso

Anthony Lupo

Susan Crockford

Joseph D’Aleo

Fred Singer

Robert Carter

Link:

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/(1-15-2012)%202012%20Heartland%20Budget.pdf”

3) “Is it that bad guys without phd and associations with the wrong institutions nullify the legitimacy of the good guys with proper credentials? Suppose you could not look them up. Would you be unable to judge the contents (with links to data) of the letter? You seem to require a certain kind of authority (defined by political means especially) to allow you to decide whether ideas are valuable. How sad. If every scientist were that intellectually timid there would be no learning. Thank goodness for the Feynmans of the world.”

4) “Short of being able to read, review and test all the science, a person has to make judgements based on additional criteria. My criteria include, but are not limited to, some things such as peer-review, credentials, reputation, availability of cited sources/affiliation/expertise, guilt-by-association, and so on. They are only part of the judgement of credibility. I looked up a book listed in the credentials of one “expert” and could not find it; I followed links, and so on.

The endpoint was when I looked for the quotation in the cited source (SREX ) and evaluated it as misrepresentation. Since the IPCC was called on as an expert source by the so-called experts, yet it claimed other than what they claimed it claimed, the credibility of the letters and listed experts is to be disparaged.

That’s the character of science, and process of knowledge. Yup, that is how one really, really does judge which ideas are valuable.”

5) “Thank you for drawing attention to this open letter. I suspect quite a number of the people named in this letter are members of naysayer groups. From an Australian perspective Prof Bob Carter is a member of the secretive Lavoissier group. I have inside knowledge of this group as I was approached with my husband to write a film script about climate change many years ago and we pulled out eventually after being told what they wanted to say about the science of climate change, which required a distortion of the facts. We had the impression that the money for the film was coming from America and I wouldn’t mind betting that it was oil and mining interest finance ($6 million). The person who set out to recruit us was a glaciologist who was also a member of the Lavoissier group. For more information see the following:

Pearse, Guy , “High and Dry”, Viking/Penguin,Camberwell, Victoria, 2007.

Hamilton, Clive, “Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne, Victoria, 2007.”

6) “I read a short and entertaining book that laid out a good process for deciding what to believe about climate change (or any other complex issue with lots of scientific research swirling around). It’s by Greg Craven and it’s called What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Besides providing a way to cut through all the chatter, the book offers sound fundamentals for people interested in how scientific information comes to be accepted. I think it’s a great book for students, especially because the author (a physics teacher) tackles tough subjects with humor.

Here’s a link to it: http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Worst-That-Could-Happen/dp/0399535012/”

Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change (Bill Moyers)

27/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsão, Violênciarenzotaddei

November 15, 2012 – The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein joins Bill to discuss hurricanes, climate change and democracy.

Saúde mental, outra vítima da mudança climática (IPS)

27/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Saúde mental, Violênciarenzotaddei

23/11/2012 – 10h05

por Patricia Grogg, da IPS

As tensões e angústias acompanham toda pessoa que sofre um desastre. Foto: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 23/11/2012 – “A cidade parecia bombardeada. Caminho para meu escritório, cruzo com pessoas que levavam em seus rostos o mesmo – diria dramático – espanto que eu. Nos olhávamos e, sem nos conhecermos, nos perguntávamos: como foi com você? Aconteceu alguma coisa com sua casa? Foi uma solidariedade afetiva muito importante para mim”. Este testemunho dado à IPS, por uma jornalista de Santiago de Cuba, coloca na balança um dos lados bons da reação coletiva após um desastre como o sofrido por esta cidade na madrugada do dia 25 de outubro, quando o furacão Sandy, apesar do alerta meteorológico e das advertências oficiais, surpreendeu boa parte de seus habitantes.

O valor econômico dos prejuízos ainda são desconhecidos hoje, quando a parte mais oriental do país cura suas feridas, graves de todos os ângulos. Mas existe também o impacto psicológico, do qual se fala menos e se vê nos olhos das pessoas quando contam: “perdemos nossa casa com móveis, eletrodomésticos, até as lembranças”. “Tive muito medo, me enfiei no armário quando o vento levou o telhado do meu quarto. Meus vizinhos me tiraram de casa e me ajudaram a atravessar a rua até onde haviam se refugiado outras famílias cujas casas estavam em muito mau estado”, contou à IPS Isabel da Cruz, de 70 anos, moradora de Guantânamo, outra área afetada.

Depressão, tristeza, angústia, desespero, incerteza e agressividade, todas estas são manifestações que acompanham as pessoas depois de um desastre em qualquer parte do mundo. “Imagine, nos deitamos com a bela e acordamos com a fera”, comparou um trabalhador do setor turístico cujo hotel onde é empregado foi totalmente destruído. “As pessoas estão deprimidas e desorientadas. Em muitas nota-se o desequilíbrio psíquico pelas perdas sofridas”, disse à IPS o sacerdote católico Eugenio Castellanos, reitor do Santuário da Caridad del Cobre, virgem padroeira de Cuba. O padre estima que 90% das casas do Cobre, localidade vizinha a esta cidade, sofreram o impacto do Sandy.

Juan González Pérez, por sua vez, disse à IPS que dias antes do furacão houve focos de violência em alguns lugares, especialmente na hora de comprar artigos em falta. “Ficamos muitos dias sem energia elétrica e começaram a vender ‘luz brilhante’ (querosene) para cozinhar. Embora houvesse o suficiente para todos, aconteceram discussões e brigas na fila. Quando as pessoas se desesperam, costumam ficar agressivas”, observou Pérez, mais conhecido por Madelaine, líder do espiritismo cruzado “muertero”, uma expressão de religiosidade popular nesse lugar. Segundo contou, aconselha aos seus seguidores “unirem-se, se lavar bem, dar a quem não tem e não se desesperar”.

Em Mar Verde, a praia por onde o Sandy tocou o território cubano a 15 quilômetros de Santiago, a médica Elizabeth Martínez atende mais de cem pessoas, abrigadas em cabanas de veraneio que, por estarem mais afastadas do mar, se salvaram do desastre. “O impacto psicológico é grande, mas não houve mortes e nem temos pessoas doentes”, contou. Pouco mais de uma semana depois da passagem do furacão, os esforços em matéria de saúde se concentravam fundamentalmente em conter focos epidêmicos. “Estamos dando informações sanitárias aos moradores, ensinando como cuidar de doenças transmissíveis, sobre a importância de descontaminar a água antes de beber”, informou a médica.

Segundo meios especializados, estima-se que entre um terço e metade de uma população exposta a desastres sofre algum tipo de problema psicológico, embora na maioria dos casos se deva entender como reações normais diante de eventos extremos, que sob o impacto da mudança climática ameaçam aumentar em intensidade.

“Quando encontrei meus vizinhos no abrigo, estávamos em choque. Mas alguém disse: vamos limpar a entrada que está bloqueada por essas árvores caídas. Então, começamos a trabalhar, embora no começo ninguém falasse”, contou uma mulher do setor turístico. Nos primeiros dias era possível ver muitas pessoas recolhendo escombros e varrendo as ruas de suas vizinhanças.

Diante da frequência e da maior intensidade dos ciclones tropicais, as autoridades de saúde, desde a década de 1990, começaram a se preocupar com o impacto psicológico dos desastres causados por esses e outros fenômenos naturais. Em 2008, quando o país sofreu três furacões, uma indicação ministerial fortaleceu a inclusão do tema nos planos sanitários. Em um artigo sobre o assunto, o médico cubano Alexis Lorenzo Ruiz explica que os aspectos psicossociais dos desastres são considerados tanto na capacitação do pessoal como na organização dos programas que chegam a todo o país e enfatizam a atenção a setores mais vulneráveis, como menores de idade, adolescentes e idosos.

Do ponto de vista da saúde mental, nos desastres toda a população “sofre tensões e angústias em maior ou menor medida, direta ou indiretamente”, afirmaram Katia Villamil e Orlando Fleitas, que recomendaram não se esquecer que o impacto nessas circunstâncias é mais acentuado em populações de escassos recursos. Estes profissionais afirmam que as reações mais frequentes vão desde as consideradas normais, como ansiedade controlável, depressão leve ou quadros “histeriformes”, até estresse “peritraumático”, embotamento, redução do nível de atenção, descompensação de transtornos psiquiátricos pré-existentes, bem como “reação coletiva de agitação”.

O furacão Sandy causou estragos não apenas em Santiago de Cuba, mas também nas províncias de Guantânamo e Holguín, com saldo de 11 mortos. O governo de Raúl Castro ainda não divulgou as perdas econômicas, embora dados preliminares e incompletos dos primeiros dias indicassem uma estimativa de US$ 88 milhões.

A system of disasters (SocialistWorker.org)

27/11/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Desastre, Discriminação, Economia, Furacão Sandy, Políticas públicas, Violênciarenzotaddei

November 20, 2012

Mike Davis is an author and veteran activist whose many books include City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Planet of Slums, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World and In Praise of Barbarians. He talked to Alan Maass about the natural and non-natural factors involved in Hurricane Sandy–and what shape New York and the East Coast will take in the aftermath of the super-storm.

Hurricane Sandy's flood surge inundates the boardwalk and beyond in Atlantic City, N.J. Hurricane Sandy’s flood surge inundates the boardwalk and beyond in Atlantic City, N.J.

LIKE ALL disasters, Hurricane Sandy revealed a lot about economic, social and political priorities–climate change being the question that received the most attention. What do you think are the most important factors to recognize?

THE TRUE story of Sandy is as much about real estate as global warming. Since the 1960s, everyone on the Atlantic seaboard who could afford it has wanted to live in a beach town or own a second home along the shore. This endless building boom, unrestrained by serious regional or national planning, has put several trillion dollars of prime real estate in harm’s way.

It has also grotesquely aggravated the affordable housing shortage by siphoning away state and municipal investment, as well federal fiscal relief, from the reconstruction of older neighborhoods and central cities. Huge public subsidies are hidden in the mansions on barrier islands and the “historic seaport” tourist zones.

At least among scientists and actuaries, there has never been any doubt that nature would collect a huge toll from this beach property bubble. Every generation or so, the Mid-Atlantic or New England gets smacked with a super-storm capable of bringing devastation as far inland as the Great Lakes.

Until Sandy, for example, the hurricane was the 1938 monster that made landfall on Long Island as a Category 3 (much stronger than Sandy) and surged over parts of the Rhode Island shoreline as a 15- to 17-foot wave. More than 800 people died. Less than a generation later, Hurricane Hazel didn’t desist until after it had drowned almost 100 people in Toronto.

Thus, even without the famous “hockey stick” of accelerated global warming, old-fashioned weather, including the occasional super-storm fueled by unusually warm coastal waters, would be producing escalating bills for storm damage. It is important for the left to understand this, since “global warming” can easily be used as an alibi to cover up the role of banks, developers and local governments in creating so much unnatural risk in the form of beach and barrier-island development.

THE STORM seems to have focused the minds of the U.S. elite about climate change, more than other events–witness the Bloomberg BusinessWeekcover headline “It’s global warming, stupid.” But will this lead to anything different?

THE MOST notorious impact of climate change, of course, will be the increased frequency of super-storms. The design strength of coastal protections, urban infrastructure and large shoreline buildings will be drastically depreciated. What the insurance industry and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers previously considered to be “hundred-year events” will happen every decade; “fifty-year events” will happen every two or three years.

More invisibly, rising sea levels–which some scientists believe is happening faster on the U.S. East Coast than elsewhere–will infiltrate coastal aquifers, raising water levels and thereby abetting flooding, as well as making water unpotable. Salt water is an insidious enemy of steel and concrete, and increased corrosion will shorten the lifespan of already elderly tunnels, bridges and electrical infrastructure.

Here, class politics kicks in again. Faced with the choice of becoming more like Holland or ending up like Atlantis, cities like New York will triage storm-damage repair and investment in new infrastructure. Saving lower Manhattan, for instance, may involve the construction of enormous floodgates in New York Harbor that will deflect storm surges and higher tides toward poorer parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

But even a triage strategy of preferential public investment for the wealthy parts of the metropolis may be beyond the means of New York and Albany as well as the global insurance industry. This was the obvious message sent by Michael Bloomberg’s endorsement of Barack Obama: New York and the Atlantic seaboard need federal investment on the scale of President Eisenhower’s interstate highway program.

SANDY FORCED the issue of climate change into the presidential campaign at the last moment, to the obvious advantage of Obama. But the record of Obama and the Democrats shows that no one should place much hope in them to deal aggressively with the threat.

THEORETICALLY, A 20-year federal program for rebuilding coastal infrastructure and protecting harbors might make eminent Keynesian sense. But it’s unlikely that Obama can disguise Stimulus Part Two as hurricane repair. I think the only question on the table at the present moment is how much austerity in lifeline programs the president will concede to make fiscal compromise possible.

Nor is it clear that the rediscovery of global warming as a clear and present danger will lead to new attempts to mitigate carbon emissions. Indeed, Sandy may have the opposite effect. A focus on repair and adaptation may further marginalize the case for carbon taxes. In any event, the shale energy revolution puts carbon in the driver’s seat for another generation or two.

Natural gas will continue to reduce the dependence of utilities on coal, but the coal will be produced anyway and exported to China. No wonder that Pricewaterhouse Coopers recently warned about the cataclysmic disruption of global supply chains as 6 degrees Centigrade warming appears the most likely future in 2100.

The politics of climate adaptation will be torturous since federal spending will involve large net tax transfers from one region or sub-region to another. Why should Tea Party activists in the Great Plains care about saving New York City? What Democrat would actually support something so unpopular as federal regulation of coastal development (even though a model exists in the Mississippi’s flood plain)?

And as Katrina showed, the poor inhabitants of the Gulf Coast, whose natural storm barriers have been sacrificed to the development of the oil and sulfur industries, have no advocates whatsoever. If large numbers of people are relocated from coastal target areas, they will not be the wealthy inhabitants of Hilton Head and its replicas.

Years ago, I enraged many people with an article entitled “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” There’s an equally strong case for letting elite beach resorts and second-home communities drown.

THOUGH LESS spectacularly than in New Orleans, the aftermath of the storm has exposed another failure of the federal response to disasters. In fact, it’s widely acknowledged that the volunteer grassroots efforts of Occupy Sandy have been more effective. What does this say about where we go next?

THE ROLE of Occupy Sandy confirms Rebecca Solnit’s thesis that disaster response usually comes from the bottom up, through the self-organization of the victims, and it often generates temporary “utopias” of cooperation and democracy.

But to build upon both the anger and hope in such situations requires programmatic initiatives. Until Mayor Ed Koch, who held the office in the 1980s, when ethnic backlash overwhelmed borough politics, the left in New York City–ranging from Socialists to Communists to Labor Party supporters to Black liberationists–had repeatedly contested the agendas of the Rockefellers on one hand and Tammany Hall on the other. The left offered astute analysis and put forward alternative municipal platforms, winning some historic victories–rent control, public housing and so on.

Taking New Orleans as the paradigm of disaster turned to elite advantage, it’s vitally important that Occupy and the “broad left” in New York anticipate, analyze and contest Bloomberg’s obvious attempt to build a new corporate consensus about the city’s future. And there is no better guide to how ruling class rules in Big Apple than Bob Fitch’s The Assassination of New York, published by Verso.

If Nelson Rockeller could deindustrialize Manhattan and drive away hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs for sake of rising land values, what will the new game bring?

Call to Modernize Antiquated Climate Negotiations (Science Daily)

19/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2012) — The structure and processes of United Nations climate negotiations are “antiquated,” unfair and obstruct attempts to reach agreements, according to research published November 18.

The findings come ahead of the 18^thUN Climate Change Summit, which starts in Doha on November 26.

The study, led by Dr Heike Schroeder from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues that the consensus-based decision making used by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stifles progress and contributes to negotiating deadlocks, which ultimately hurts poor countries more than rich countries.

It shows that delegations from some countries taking part have increased in size over the years, while others have decreased, limiting poor countries’ negotiating power and making their participation less effective.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Dr Schroeder, Dr Maxwell Boykoff of the University of Colorado and Laura Spiers of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, argue that changes are long overdue if demands for climate mitigation and adaptation agreements are to be met.

They recommend that countries consider capping delegation numbers at a level that allows broad representation across government departments and sectors of society, while maintaining a manageable overall size.

Dr Schroeder, of UEA’s School of International Development, will be attending COP18. She said: “The UN must recognize that these antiquated structures serve to constrain rather than compel co-operation on international climate policy. The time is long overdue for changes to institutions and structures that do not support decision-making and agreements.

“Poor countries cannot afford to send large delegations and their level of expertise usually remains significantly below that of wealthier countries. This limits poor countries’ negotiating power and makes their participation in each session less effective.”

The researchers found that attendance has changed in terms of the number and diversity of representatives. The number of delegates went from 757 representing 170 countries at the first COP in 1995 to 10,591 individuals from 194 countries attending COP15 in 2009 — a 1400 per cent increase. At COP15 there were also 13,500 delegates from 937 non-government Observer organisations.

Small developing countries have down-sized their delegations while G-7 and +5 countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) have increased theirs. The exception is the United States, which after withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol started to send fewer delegates to COPs.

The study also looked at the make-up of the delegations and found an increase in participation by environmental, campaigning, academic and other non-Governmental organisations.

“Our work shows an increasing trend in the size of delegations on one side and a change in the intensity, profile and politicization of the negotiations on the other,” explained Dr Schroeder. “These variations suggest the climate change issue and its associated interests are framed quite differently across countries. NSAs are well represented on national delegations but clearly the government decides who is included and who is not, and what the official negotiating position of the country and its level of negotiating flexibility are.”

Some countries send large representations from business associations (Brazil), local government (Canada) orscience and academia (Russia). For small developing countries such as Bhutan and Gabon the majority of government representatives come from environment, forestry and agriculture. The UK has moved from mainly environment, forestry and agriculture to energy and natural resources. The US has shifted from these more conventional areas to an overwhelming representation from the US Congress at COP15.

Journal Reference:

Heike Schroeder, Maxwell T. Boykoff, Laura Spiers. Equity and state representations in climate negotiations.Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1742

Government, Industry Can Better Manage Risks of Very Rare Catastrophic Events, Experts Say (Science Daily)

19/11/2012UncategorizedAversão a risco, Cognição, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Memória, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Psicologia, Risco, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2012) — Several potentially preventable disasters have occurred during the past decade, including the recent outbreak of rare fungal meningitis linked to steroid shots given to 13,000 patients to relieve back pain. Before that, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion in 2003, the financial crisis that started in 2008, the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2011, and the Fukushima tsunami and ensuing nuclear accident also in 2011 were among rare and unexpected disasters that were considered extremely unlikely or even unthinkable.

A Stanford University engineer and risk management expert has analyzed the phenomenon of government and industry waiting for rare catastrophes to happen before taking risk management steps. She concluded that a different approach to these events would go far towards anticipating them, preventing them or limiting the losses.

To examine the risk management failures discernible in several major catastrophes, the research draws upon the combination of systems analysis and probability as used, for example, in engineering risk analysis. When relevant statistics are not available, it discusses the powerful alternative of systemic risk analysis to try to anticipate and manage the risks of highly uncertain, rare events. The paper by Stanford University researcher Professor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell recommends “a systematic risk analysis anchored in history and fundamental knowledge” as opposed to both industry and regulators sometimes waiting until after a disaster occurs to take safety measures as was the case, for example, of the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2011. Her paper, “On ‘Black Swans’ and ‘Perfect Storms’: Risk Analysis and Management When Statistics Are Not Enough,” appears in the November 2012 issue of Risk Analysis, published by the Society for Risk Analysis.

Paté-Cornell’s paper draws upon two commonly cited images representing different types of uncertainty — “black swans” and “perfect storms” — that are used both to describe extremely unlikely but high-consequence events and often to justify inaction until after the fact. The uncertainty in “perfect storms” derives mainly from the randomness of rare but known events occurring together. The uncertainty in “black swans” stems from the limits of fundamental understanding of a phenomenon, including in extreme cases, a complete lack of knowledge about its very existence.

Given these two extreme types of uncertainties, Paté-Cornell asks what has been learned about rare events in engineering risk analysis that can be incorporated in other fields such as finance or medicine. She notes that risk management often requires “an in-depth analysis of the system, its functions, and the probabilities of its failure modes.” The discipline confronts uncertainties by systematic identification of failure “scenarios,” including rare ones, using “reasoned imagination,” signals (new intelligence information, medical alerts, near-misses and accident precursors) and a set of analytical tools to assess the chances of events that have not happened yet. A main emphasis of systemic risk analysis is on dependencies (of failures, human errors, etc.) and on the role of external factors, such as earthquakes and tsunamis that become common causes of failure.

The “risk of no risk analysis” is illustrated by the case of the 14 meter Fukushima tsunami resulting from a magnitude 9 earthquake. Historical records showed that large tsunamis had occurred at least twice before in the same area. The first time was the Sanriku earthquake in the year 869, which was estimated at magnitude 8.6 with a tsunami that penetrated 4 kilometers inland. The second was the Sanriku earthquake of 1611, estimated at magnitude 8.1 that caused a tsunami with an estimated maximum wave height of about 20 meters. Yet, those previous events were not factored into the design of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor, which was built for a maximum wave height of 5.7 meters, simply based on the tidal wave caused in that area by the 1960 earthquake in Chile. Similar failures to capture historical data and various “signals” occurred in the cases of the 9/11 attacks, the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion and other examples analyzed in the paper.

The risks of truly unimaginable events that have never been seen before (such as the AIDS epidemics) cannot be assessed a priori, but careful and systematic monitoring, signals observation and a concerted response are keys to limiting the losses. Other rare events that place heavy pressure on human or technical systems are the result of convergences of known events (“perfect storms”) that can and should be anticipated. Their probabilities can be assessed using a set of analytical tools that capture dependencies and dynamics in scenario analysis. Given the results of such models, there should be no excuse for failing to take measures against rare but predictable events that have damaging consequences, and to react to signals, even imperfect ones, that something new may be unfolding.

Journal Reference:

Elisabeth Paté-Cornell. On “Black Swans” and “Perfect Storms”: Risk Analysis and Management When Statistics Are Not Enough. Risk Analysis, 2012; DOI:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01787.x

Estudo aumenta precisão ao simular clima (Folha de São Paulo)

14/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4621, de 09 de Novembro de 2012.

Americanos conseguiram método indireto para levar em conta o papel das nuvens no aquecimento do planeta. Metodologia criada por eles indica que o mais provável neste século é que temperatura média aumente perto de 4º C.

Pesquisadores americanos acabam de achar um meio de determinar quais modelos da mudança climática parecem ser os mais precisos. E a má notícia: os melhores são os que predizem modificações mais drásticas no clima para as próximas décadas.

O segredo do trabalho, conduzido por John Fasullo e Kevin Trenberth, do Centro Nacional Para Pesquisa Atmosférica em Boulder, Colorado, foi se concentrar naquilo que se podia ver -no caso, a umidade relativa em regiões subtropicais- para compreender o que é muito mais difícil de medir: a dinâmica das nuvens.

As nuvens são um dos elementos-chave na interpretação do fenômeno do aquecimento global. Isso porque elas têm um efeito duplo. Por um lado, por serem claras, elas refletem a luz solar para o espaço, resultando em resfriamento. Por outro, o vapor d’água nelas é um poderoso gás do efeito estufa, podendo gerar aquecimento.

Os modelos de computador têm dificuldade em lidar com as nuvens e seu papel na evolução do clima.

Incerteza, em termos – Já é possível simular, ao menos em parte, o efeito delas, e existe um consenso mais ou menos claro de que a soma de tudo que elas fazem resulta em suave resfriamento. Entretanto, ainda há muita incerteza sobre o que isso significa para o futuro.

Tal incerteza é o grande mal a afetar a ciência do aquecimento global. Os detratores costumam apontá-la como a prova de que o medo da mudança climática é muito mais um movimento ideológico do que uma conclusão científica inescapável.

Ao que tudo indica, porém, a incerteza diz respeito ao nível de aquecimento para as próximas décadas, mas não ao fenômeno em si. Alguns modelos sugerem que, nos próximos cem anos, veremos um aumento da temperatura média da ordem de 4,5 graus Celsius. Já os mais modestos preveem que tudo não passará de uma variação de 1,5 grau Celsius.

Foi aí que entrou em cena o lampejo de Fasullo e Trenberth. Como é difícil observar diretamente as propriedades das nuvens e compará-las com o que os modelos oferecem, eles decidiram estudar a umidade relativa do ar, sobretudo nas regiões subtropicais, em geral mais secas.

A vantagem é que dados de umidade relativa são obtidos com confiança a partir de satélites, de forma que é possível contrastar as previsões dos modelos para o presente com observações reais. Também há forte correlação entre a umidade relativa e o processo de formação de nuvens, de forma que, a partir de um, é possível inferir o efeito de outro. O chato é que os modelos que parecem estar mais corretos são justamente aqueles que preveem mudanças mais fortes, da ordem de 4,5º C.

A questão das nuvens, porém, não é a única fonte de incertezas. “Esse trabalho é só uma das peças do quebra-cabeças da sensibilidade climática”, afirma Karen Shell, da Universidade Estadual do Oregon (EUA), que comentou a pesquisa na mesma edição da revista “Science” na qual os resultados saíram.

Desastre natural é empecilho ao desenvolvimento do Brasil (O Globo)

14/11/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Desastre, Desenvolvimento econômico, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4621, de 09 de Novembro de 2012.

Especialista do Banco Mundial, Joaquín Toro diz que enchentes dos últimos cinco anos custaram R$ 15 bilhões; problema deve se agravar com mudança climática.

O Brasil gosta de se imaginar como um país livre de desastres naturais. Isso é verdade?
O Brasil não tem eventos catastróficos que afetem o País inteiro, como tsunamis, terremotos, furacões. Quer dizer, não com muita intensidade. Porque, na verdade, temos terremotos, há zonas sísmicas em Minas e no Nordeste, e ciclones tropicais – houve dois nos últimos dez anos, embora não muito grandes. Há uma percepção no País de que não há eventos catastróficos. Mas quando olhamos por estado, vemos grandes perdas, tanto humanas quanto econômicas.

Qual foi o pior deles?
Nos últimos cinco anos, tivemos quatro grandes eventos. O primeiro, em 2008, as enchentes do Vale do Itajaí, em Santa Catarina. Tivemos enchentes também em Pernambuco e Alagoas, em 2010, e as enxurradas no Rio, na Região Serrana, no começo do ano passado. Para dizer qual foi o pior, qual teve o maior impacto, depende do que for levado em conta. Em termos de número de vidas perdidas, o do Rio de Janeiro foi o pior dos últimos tempos do Brasil, com cerca de mil mortos. Mas se considerarmos o impacto econômico comparado com o PIB do estado, por exemplo, vemos que o de Alagoas foi o mais impactante: quase 8% do PIB.

Por que fazer os estudos agora?
Nunca foi feita sistematicamente no Brasil a avaliação do impacto econômico de desastres. Não diz respeito apenas a perdas diretas, como a destruição de uma ponte, de uma escola, de infraestrutura. Mas também, o impacto da perda da ponte na produção econômica. Essa avaliação não era muito sistematizada. Havia a cultura de pagar pelo desastre. Como em geral não morre muita gente, a percepção é de que o desastre não foi grande. Mas economicamente foi catastrófico.

Mesmo em comparação ao furacão Sandy, nos EUA?
O furacão teve um impacto econômico de US$ 50 bilhões, o equivalente a 2% do PIB da região afetada. Em Alagoas, o prejuízo foi de 8% do PIB. Claro que Alagoas é um dos estados mais pobres do Brasil, qualquer impacto será grande. Mas o que estamos querendo demonstrar é que isso pode ser um empecilho ao desenvolvimento.

Como isso ocorre?
Geralmente o que acontece é que, para pagar o desastre, a reconstrução, é preciso buscar recursos em algum lugar. Primeiro, o município começa a usar todos os recursos que tem. Vão embora seus planos de desenvolvimento, programas sociais, educação, saúde. Todos os recursos vão suprir a reconstrução. Aí vêm as transferências estaduais e federais, que também saem de algum orçamento, porque não existe fundo de emergência. Outros estados acabam sendo afetados.

Qual foi o atraso no desenvolvimento por conta desses eventos?
Não temos esse número, mas o impacto econômico dos desastres naturais nos últimos cinco anos foi de R$ 15 bilhões. A pergunta é: o que poderíamos ter feito com R$ 15 bilhões?

É mais caro reconstruir?
É muito mais caro. Estudos mostram que para cada dólar investido em prevenção ou redução de riscos, representa uma economia de 5 a 7 dólares na recuperação.

Por que não há prevenção?
Por um lado não tínhamos muito conhecimento do risco, não entendíamos o problema. Não há cultura de prevenção e as pessoas esquecem muito rápido, o que ocorreu há cinco, dez anos. Mas há mudanças. Há uma nova política de redução de riscos.

Piora com o aquecimento global?
A pergunta é o que vamos fazer para evitar o crescimento desordenado das cidades. Se tivermos de 10% a 20% a mais de chuvas mas também cidades bem resolvidas, o impacto será muito menor. Mas, se não pudermos nos adaptar, será ainda mais difícil. Vamos ter mais chuvas e secas, e variabilidade climática alta.

Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists (The Guardian)

14/11/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Desastre, Economiarenzotaddei

The aftermath of the storm offers a chance to rebuild a fairer society. How can we seize it?

Naomi Klein

The Guardian, Tuesday 6 November 2012 18.22 GMT

Destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point, New York. Photograph: Julie Hau/Demotix/Corbis

Less than three days after Sandy made landfall on the east coast of the United States, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute blamed New Yorkers’ resistance to Big Box stores for the misery they were about to endure. Writing on Forbes.com, he explained that the city’s refusal to embrace Walmart will likely make the recovery much harder: “Mom-and-pop stores simply can’t do what big stores can in these circumstances,” he wrote. He also warned that if the pace of reconstruction turned out to be sluggish (as it so often is) then “pro-union rules such as the Davis-Bacon Act” would be to blame, a reference to the statute that requires workers on public works projects to be paid not the minimum wage, but the prevailing wage in the region.

The same day, Frank Rapoport, a lawyer representing several billion-dollar construction and real estate contractors, jumped in to suggest that many of those public works projects shouldn’t be public at all. Instead, cash-strapped governments should turn to public private partnerships, known as “P3s” in the US. That means roads, bridges and tunnels being rebuilt by private companies, which, for instance, could install tolls and keep the profits. These deals aren’t legal in New York or New Jersey, but Rapoport believes that can change. “There were some bridges that were washed out in New Jersey that need structural replacement, and it’s going to be very expensive,” he told the Nation. “And so the government may well not have the money to build it the right way. And that’s when you turn to a P3.”

The prize for shameless disaster capitalism, however, surely goes to rightwing economist Russell S Sobel, writing in a New York Times online forum. Sobel suggested that, in hard-hit areas, Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) should create “free-trade zones – in which all normal regulations, licensing and taxes [are] suspended”. This corporate free-for-all would, apparently, “better provide the goods and services victims need”.

Yes, that’s right: this catastrophe, very likely created by climate change – a crisis born of the colossal regulatory failure to prevent corporations from treating the atmosphere as their open sewer – is just one more opportunity for further deregulation. And the fact that this storm has demonstrated that poor and working-class people are far more vulnerable to the climate crisis shows that this is clearly the right moment to strip those people of what few labour protections they have left, as well as to privatise the meagre public services available to them. Most of all, when faced with an extraordinarily costly crisis born of corporate greed, hand out tax holidays to corporations.

The flurry of attempts to use Sandy’s destructive power as a cash grab is just the latest chapter in the very long story I have called the The Shock Doctrine. And it is but the tiniest glimpse into the ways large corporations are seeking to reap enormous profits from climate chaos.

One example: between 2008 and 2010, at least 261 patents were filed or issued relating to “climate-ready” crops – seeds supposedly able to withstand extreme conditions such as droughts and floods; of these patents close to 80% were controlled by just six agribusiness giants, including Monsanto and Syngenta. With history as our teacher, we know that small farmers will go into debt trying to buy these new miracle seeds, and that many will lose their land.

In November 2010, the Economist ran a climate change cover story that provides a useful (if harrowing) blueprint for how climate change could serve as the pretext for the last great land grab, a final colonial clearing of the forests, farms and coastlines by a handful of multinationals. The editors explain that droughts and heat stress are such a threat to farmers that only big players can survive the turmoil, and that “abandoning the farm may be the way many farmers choose to adapt”. They had the same message for fisherfolk occupying valuable ocean-front lands: wouldn’t it be so much safer, given rising seas and all, if they joined their fellow farmers in the urban slums? “Protecting a single port city from floods is easier than protecting a similar population spread out along a coastline of fishing villages.”

But, you might wonder, isn’t there a joblessness problem in most of these cities? Nothing a little “reform of labour markets” and free trade can’t fix. Besides, cities, they explain, have “social strategies, formal or informal”. I’m pretty sure that means people whose “social strategies” used to involve growing and catching their own food can now cling to life by selling broken pens at intersections, or perhaps by dealing drugs. What the informal social strategy should be when superstorm winds howl through those precarious slums remains unspoken.

For a long time, climate change was treated by environmentalists as a great equaliser, the one issue that affected everyone, rich or poor. They failed to account for the myriad ways by which the super rich would protect themselves from the less savory effects of the economic model that made them so wealthy. In the past six years, we have seen in the US the emergence of private fire fighters, hired by insurance companies to offer a “concierge” service to their wealthier clients, as well as the short-lived “HelpJet” – a charter airline in Florida that offered five-star evacuation services from hurricane zones. Now, post-Sandy, upmarket real estate agents are predicting that back-up power generators will be the new status symbol with the penthouse and mansion set.

For some, it seems, climate change is imagined less as a clear and present danger than as a kind of spa vacation; nothing that the right combination of bespoke services and well-curated accessories can’t overcome. That, at least, was the impression left by the Barneys New York’s pre-Sandy sale – which offered deals on sencha green tea, backgammon sets and $500 throw blankets so its high-end customers could “settle in with style”.

So we know how the shock doctors are readying to exploit the climate crisis, and we know from the past how that story ends. But here is the real question: could this crisis present a different kind of opportunity, one that disperses power into the hands of the many rather than consolidating it the hands of the few; one that radically expands the commons, rather than auctions it off in pieces? In short, could Sandy be the beginning of A People’s Shock?

I think it can. As I outlined last year, there are changes we can make that actually have a chance of getting our emissions down to the level science demands. These include re-localising our economies (so we are going to need those farmers where they are); vastly expanding and reimagining the public sphere to not just hold back the next storm but to prevent even worse disruptions in the future; regulating the hell out of corporations and reducing their poisonous political power; and reinventing economics so it no longer defines success as the endless expansion of consumption.

Just as the Great Depression and the second world war launched movements that claimed as their proud legacies social safety nets across the industrialised world, so climate change can be a historic occasion to usher in the next great wave of progressive change. Moreover, none of the anti-democratic trickery I described in The Shock Doctrine is necessary to advance this agenda. Far from seizing on the climate crisis to push through unpopular policies, our task is to seize upon it to demand a truly populist agenda.

The reconstruction from Sandy is a great place to start road testing these ideas. Unlike the disaster capitalists who use crisis to end-run democracy, a People’s Recovery (as many from the Occupy movement are already demanding) would call for new democratic processes, including neighbourhood assemblies, to decide how hard-hit communities should be rebuilt. The overriding principle must be addressing the twin crises of inequality and climate change at the same time. For starters, that means reconstruction that doesn’t just create jobs but jobs that pay a living wage. It means not just more public transit, but energy-efficient, affordable housing along those transit lines. It also means not just more renewable power, but democratic community control over those projects.

But at the same time as we ramp up alternatives, we need to step up the fight against the forces actively making the climate crisis worse. That means standing firm against the continued expansion of the fossil fuel sector into new and high-risk territories, whether through tar sands, fracking, coal exports to China or Arctic drilling. It also means recognising the limits of political pressure and going after the fossil fuel companies directly, as we are doing at 350.org with our “Do The Math” tour. These companies have shown that they are willing to burn five times as much carbon as the most conservative estimates say is compatible with a liveable planet. We’ve done the maths, and we simply can’t let them.

Either this crisis will become an opportunity for an evolutionary leap, a holistic readjustment of our relationship with the natural world. Or it will become an opportunity for the biggest disaster capitalism free-for-all in human history, leaving the world even more brutally cleaved between winners and losers.

When I wrote The Shock Doctrine, I was documenting crimes of the past. The good news is that this is a crime in progress; it is still within our power to stop it. Let’s make sure that, this time, the good guys win.

Apenas 6,2% dos municípios do País têm plano de prevenção de catástrofes (O Estado de São Paulo)

14/11/2012Uncategorizedágua, Clima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4624, de 14 de Novembro de 2012.

Levantamento do IBGE revela que, apesar do aumento no número de tragédias nos últimos anos causadas por fatores externos, como chuvas e deslizamentos, plano de redução de riscos só foi adotado em metade das cidades maiores, com mais de 500 mil habitantes.

Até o ano passado, apenas 6,2% das 5.565 cidades brasileiras tinham plano de redução de riscos relacionados a desastres naturais, segundo a Pesquisa de Informações Básicas Municipais (Munic), divulgada ontem (13) pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Outros 10% informaram estar elaborando esses planos em 2011.

O estudo mostra que a preocupação é mais comum em cidades mais populosas. Entre os municípios com mais de 500 mil habitantes, 52,6% tinham plano de redução de riscos. Na divisão regional, o Sudeste apresentou a maior proporção de cidades com planos (9,6%) e a Região Sul, a menor (4,4%).

“O fato de o Brasil não ter terremoto nem furacão acaba causando uma impressão de que somos um país agraciado pela natureza, colocando a prevenção em segundo plano. A preocupação em relação a eventos extremos ainda é um assunto recente, que não faz parte de muitas agendas”, diz Valcler Rangel, vice-presidente da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) para a área de meio ambiente.

Segundo ele, o Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas em Desastres, vinculado à Fiocruz, mostra um crescimento das consequências provocadas por eventos extremos. “A tragédia que matou mais de 900 pessoas em 2011 na Região Serrana do Rio é suficiente para demonstrar que não estamos preparados. Além das casas destruídas, quase 80% das escolas e unidades de saúde estavam em áreas de risco, sinal da ocupação desordenada.”

Lançado pela presidente Dilma Rousseff em agosto, o Plano Nacional de Gestão de Riscos e Resposta a Desastres Naturais prevê que cada prefeitura tenha o seu plano para evitar danos causados por enchentes ou deslizamentos de terra, entre outros eventos. No entanto, ainda não há uma obrigatoriedade. Os planos municipais devem ter informações sobre ocupações irregulares, diagnósticos de áreas de risco e estratégias para remoção, entre outras.

É a primeira vez que o IBGE levanta essas informações na Munic. Os pesquisadores também perguntaram aos prefeitos se, independentemente da realização dos planos, haviam feito programas ou ações de gerenciamento de riscos de deslizamento e recuperação ambiental de caráter preventivo. Apenas 32% declararam realizá-los. As prefeituras que informaram realizar ações desse tipo se concentraram principalmente em drenagem urbana.

Para o levantamento de 2013, a Munic deverá verificar se municípios que sofreram danos causados por desastres naturais fizeram algo para evitá-los. A pesquisa também mostra que a maioria das prefeituras (84,6%) informou ter executado, nos dois anos anteriores, algum tipo programa no setor de habitação. A ação mais realizada foi a construção de unidades habitacionais (65,6%), seguida pela melhoria de unidades (44,3%).

Bolsa-aluguel na Bahia – Apesar de sofrer com grandes enchentes – pelo menos uma por ano desde 2001 – e deslizamentos de terras, o município de Lauro de Freitas (BA), na região metropolitana de Salvador, não tem uma política formal de prevenção de riscos na área habitacional. Mas, segundo a prefeitura, não há moradores nas áreas de risco catalogadas pelo município neste ano.

“Por mais que a gente planejasse e fizesse obras de infraestrutura contra desastres naturais, elas não dariam vazão ao grande volume de água que chega à cidade”, diz a prefeita Moema Gramacho (PT), lembrando que o município é cortado por seis rios. “Priorizamos a retirada das famílias que moravam nas áreas de risco”, explica.

Segundo a prefeita, um levantamento de 2005 mostrou que cerca de 10 mil pessoas (6,7% dos habitantes) moravam em áreas de “alto risco” para enchentes e deslizamentos. O estudo levou a uma lei municipal que garante a moradores de áreas de risco, cadastrados em programas sociais, como o Bolsa-Família, o pagamento mensal de aluguel em imóveis seguros, por parte da prefeitura.

O valor oferecido pela administração, no chamado “bolsa-aluguel”, é de R$ 150 a R$ 200 por mês, até que a prefeitura conceda ao beneficiário um imóvel – ou que ele deixe de se enquadrar no perfil. “Chegamos a ter 1.800 beneficiados pelo bolsa-aluguel; hoje são cerca de 600”, diz a prefeita.

A grande mudança veio com o Minha Casa, Minha Vida, do governo federal, e com programas similares da própria prefeitura e do governo da Bahia nos últimos anos. Pelos programas, foram contratadas cerca de sete mil unidades habitacionais para a cidade, das quais 3,7 mil foram entregues.

Nas áreas de risco desocupadas, os imóveis foram destruídos e estão sendo instalados parques, para desestimular invasões. “Monitoramos essas áreas com frequência”, diz a prefeita. Para Moema, o próximo passo é universalizar o sistema de saneamento básico. Hoje, apenas 9% dos imóveis contam com esgotamento sanitário.

Qualidade da água – Apenas 28% dos municípios brasileiros têm política de saneamento básico, quase metade (47,8%) não fiscaliza a qualidade da água fornecida à população e apenas um terço (32,3%) tem programa de coleta seletiva de lixo em atividade. É o que revela a Pesquisa de Informações Básicas Municipais (Munic) divulgada pelo IBGE. Em 2011, pela primeira vez foi abordada a questão do saneamento.

Cruzamento de dados com a última Pesquisa Nacional de Saneamento Básico (PNSB), de 2008, indica que não houve avanço significativo no período. Na Munic, as informações são levantadas com as prefeituras.

“Os municípios ainda não estão estruturados com ênfase para a questão do saneamento. Em relação à PNSB 2008, os dados são parecidos. Poderia ter havido um movimento melhor, por exemplo, na questão da coleta seletiva”, diz Daniela Santos Barreto, pesquisadora da coordenação de População e Indicadores Sociais do IBGE.

A Região Sul possuía a maior proporção de municípios com programas, projetos ou ações de coleta seletiva em atividade (55,8%), seguida pelo Sudeste, com 41,5%. Norte e Nordeste apresentaram as maiores proporções de municípios sem programas: 62,8% e 62,3%. Em Roraima, nenhum município tinha coleta seletiva em 2011.

A Munic também mostra que apenas um terço dos municípios brasileiros tinha estrutura única para cuidar do saneamento em 2011, apesar de o Plano Nacional de Saneamento Básico prever que todos deveriam ter. Além disso, 60% não realizavam nenhum acompanhamento das licenças relativas ao abastecimento de água, esgotamento sanitário e drenagem. De acordo com a pesquisa, as políticas de saneamento são fragmentadas. “Em relação à lei de saneamento, ainda é preciso uma sensibilização dos municípios, para que cumpram suas responsabilidades de fiscalizar e normatizar a execução de serviços”, acrescenta Daniela.

No caso da falta de órgão responsável pela fiscalização da qualidade da água, o índice chega a 58% dos municípios no Nordeste. O IBGE mostra que 30,7% das prefeituras tinham conhecimento da existência de cooperativas ou associações de catadores de materiais recicláveis, mas apenas 14,8% haviam realizado alguma parceria com esses trabalhadores.

Roraima expõe falta de política de lixo – Roraima é o melhor exemplo do descaso com tratamento de lixo no País. Nenhum dos 15 municípios do Estado tem programa de coleta seletiva. Apenas a capital, Boa Vista, dispõe de um aterro sanitário. Nos demais municípios, o lixo domiciliar e hospitalar é despejado em lixões a céu aberto.

No contrato que a prefeitura de Boa Vista mantém com a empresa Soma, por exemplo, há previsão de coleta seletiva, mas não há dinheiro para implementar a medida, informa o responsável pelo serviço de limpeza, Éder Jonas Coelho. A prefeitura paga R$ 900 mil pelo recolhimento do lixo e manutenção do aterro sanitário. “Com a coleta seletiva, o preço seria dobrado”, diz.

A coleta d elixo na capital foi prejudicada depois que o contrato com a Soma sofreu redução de 25%, por causa da queda nos valores do Fundo de Participação dos Municípios (FPM). Em muitas ruas da cidade a cena é de lixo acumulado nas calçadas.

Cultural Dimensions of Climate Change Are Underestimated, Overlooked and Misunderstood (Science Daily)

13/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Cultura, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Psicologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2012) — The impact of climate change on many aspects of cultural life for people all over the world is not being sufficiently accounted for by scientists and policy-makers. University of Exeter-led research by an international team, published on 11th November in Nature Climate Change, shows that cultural factors are key to making climate change real to people and to motivating their responses.

From enjoying beaches or winter sports and visiting iconic natural spaces to using traditional methods of agriculture and construction in our daily lives, the research highlights the cultural experiences that bind our communities and are under threat as a result of climate change. The paper argues that governments’ programmes for dealing with the consequences of climate change do not give enough consideration to what really matters to individuals and communities.

Culture binds people together and helps them overcome threats to their environments and livelihoods. Some are already experiencing such threats and profound changes to their lives. For example, the Polynesian Island of Niue, which experiences cyclones, has a population of 1,500 with four times as many Niueans now living in New Zealand. The research shows that most people remaining on the island resist migrating because of a strong attachment to the island. There is strong evidence to suggest that it is important for people’s emotional well-being to have control over whether and where they move. The researchers argue that these psychological factors have not been addressed.

Lead researcher Professor Neil Adger of the University of Exeter said: “Governments have not yet addressed the cultural losses we are all facing as a result of global climate change and this could have catastrophic consequences. If the cultural dimensions of climate change continue to be ignored, it is likely that responses will fail to be effective because they simply do not connect with what matters to individuals and communities. It is vital that the cultural impact of climate change is considered, alongside plans to adapt our physical spaces to the changing environment.”

Professor Katrina Brown from the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute adds: “The evidence is clear; when people experience the impacts of climate change in places that matter to them, the problems become real and they are motivated to make their futures more sustainable. This is as true in coastal Cornwall as in Pacific Islands.”

Journal Reference:

W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, Katrina Brown, Nadine Marshall, Karen O’Brien. Cultural dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1666

Risk (Fractal Ontology)

04/11/2012UncategorizedCaos, Clima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Fractais, Furacão Sandy, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Riscorenzotaddei

http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/risk/

Joseph Weissman | Thursday, November 1, 2012

Paul Klee, “Insula Dulcamara” (1938); Oil on newsprint, mounted on burlap

I began writing this before disaster struck very close to home; and so I finish it without finishing it. A disaster never really ends; it strikes and strikes continuously — and so even silence is insufficient. But yet there is also no expression of concern, no response which could address comprehensively the immense and widespread suffering of bodies and minds and spirits. I would want to emphasize my plea below upon the responsibility of thinkers and artists and writers to create new ways of thinking the disaster; if only to mitigate the possibility of their recurrence. (Is it not the case that the disaster increasingly has the characteristics of the accident; that the Earth and global techno-science are increasingly co-extensive Powers?) And yet despite these necessary new ways of thinking and feeling, I fear it will remain the case that nothing can be said about a disaster, if only because nothing can ultimately be thought about the disaster. But it cannot be simply passed over in silence; if nothing can be said, then perhaps everything may be said.

Inherent to the notion of risk is the multiple, or multiplicity. The distance between the many and the multiple is nearly infinite; every problem of the one and the many resolves to the perspective of the one, while multiplicity always singularizes, takes a line of pure variation or difference to its highest power. A multiplicity is already a life, the sea, time: a cosmos or style in terms of powers and forces; a melody or refrain in its fractured infinity.

The multiple is clear in its “being” only transitorily — as the survey of a fleet or swarm or network; the thought which grasps it climbs mountains, ascends vertiginously towards that infinite height which would finally reveal the substrate of the plane, the “truth” of its shadowy depths, the mysterious origins of its nomadic populations.

No telescopic lens could be large enough to approach this distance; and yet it is traversed instantaneously when the tragic arc of a becoming terminates in disaster; when a line of flight turns into a line of death, when one-or-several lines of organization and development reach a point beyond which avoiding self-destruction is impossible.

Chaos, boundless furnace of becoming! Fulminating entropy which compels even the cosmos itself upon a tragic arc of time; are birth and death not one in chaos or superfusion?

Schizophrenia is perhaps this harrowing recognition that there are only machines machining machines, without limit, bottomless.

In chaos, there is no longer disaster; but there are no longer subjects or situations or signifiers. Every subject, signifier and situation approaches its inevitable as the Disaster which would rend their very being from them; hence the nihilism of the sign, the emptiness of the subject, the void of the situation. Existence is farce — if loss is (permitted to become) tragedy, omnipresent, cosmic, deified.

There is an infinite tragedy at the heart of the disaster; a trauma which makes the truth of our fate impossible-to-utter; on the one hand because imbued with infinite meaning, because singular — and on the other, in turn, meaningless, because essentially nullified, without-reason. That the disaster is never simply pure incidental chaos, a purely an-historical interruption, is perhaps the key point: we start and end with a disaster that prevents us from establishing either end or beginning — a disaster which swiftly looms to cosmic and even ontological proportions…

Perhaps there is only a life after the crisis, after a breakthrough or breakdown; after an encounter with the outside. A life as strategy or risk, which is perhaps to say a multiplicity: a life, or the breakthrough of — and, perhaps inevitably, breakdown before — white walls, mediation, determinacy.

A life in any case is always-already a voice, a cosmos, a thought: it is light or free movement whose origin and destination cannot be identified as stable sites or moments, whose comings and goings are curiously intertwined and undetermined.

We cannot know the limits of a life’s power; but we know disaster. We know that multiplicities, surging flocks of actions and passions, are continually at risk.

The world presents itself unto a life as an inescapable gravity, monstrous fate, the contagion of space, time, organization. A life expresses itself as an openness which is lacerated by the Open.

A life is a cosmos within a cosmos — and so a life opens up closed systems; it struggles and learns not in spite of entropy but on account of it, through a kind of critical strategy, even a perversely recursive or fractal strategy; through the micro-cosmogenetic sieve of organic life, entropy perversely becomes a hyper-organizational principle.

A life enters into a perpetual and weightless ballet — in a defiance-which-is-not-a-defiance of stasis; a stasis which yet presents a grave and continuous danger to a life.

What is a life, apart from infinite movement or disaster? Time, a dream, the sea: but a life moves beyond rivers of time, or seas of dreaming, or the outer spaces of radical forgetting (and alien memories…)

A life is a silence which may become wise. A life — or that perverse machine which works only by breaking down — or through…

A life is intimacy through parasitism, already a desiring-machine-factory or a tensor-calculus of the unconscious.

A life lives in taut suspension from one or several lines of becoming, of flight or death — lines whose ultimate trajectories may not be known through any safe or even sure method.

A life is the torsion between dying and rebirth.

Superfusion between all potentialities, a life is infinite-becoming of the subjectless-subject. Superject.

Journeying and returning, without moving, from the infinity and chaos of the outside/inside. A stationary voyage in a non-dimensional cosmos, where everything flows, heats, grinds.

Phenomenology is a geology of the unconscious, a problem of the crystalline apparatus of time. Could there be at long last a technology of time which would abandon strip-mining the subsconscious?

A chrono-technics which ethico-aesthetically creates and transforms virtual and actual worlds, traces possibilities of living, thinking, thinking; diagnoses psychic, social and physical ecosystems simultaneously.

A communications-strategy, but one that could point beyond the vicious binary of coercion and conflation — but so therefore would not-communicate.

There is a a recursive problem surrounding the silence and darkness at the heart of a life; it is perhaps impossible to exhaust (at least clinically) the infinitely-deferred origin of those crystalline temporal dynamisms which in turn structure any-moment-whatsoever.

Is there a silence which would constitute that very singular machinic ‘sheaf’, the venerated crystalline paradise of the moved-unmoving?

Silence, wisdom.

The impossibility of this origin is also the interminability of the analysis; also the infinite movement attending any moment whatsoever. It is the history of disaster, of the devil.

There is only thinking when a thought becomes critically or clinically engaged with a world, a cosmos. This engagement discovers its bottomlessness in a disaster for thought itself. A disaster for life, thought, the world; but also perhaps their infinitely-deferred origins…

What happens in the physical, economic, social and psychic collapse of a world, a thought, a life? Is it only in this collapse, commensurate with the collision, interference of one cosmos with another…?

Collapse is never a final state. There is no closed system of causes but a kind of original fracture. The schizophrenic coexistence of many separate worlds in a kind of meta-stable superfusion.

A thought, a cosmos, a world, a life can have no other origin than the radical corruption and novel genesis of a pure substance of thinking, living, “worlding,” “cosmosing.” A becoming refracts within its own infinite history the history of a life, a world, a thought.

Although things doubtless seem discouraging, at any moment whatsoever a philosophy can be made possible. At any time and place, this cyclonic involution of the library of Babel can be reactivated, this golden ball propelled by comet-fire and dancing towards the future can be captured in a moment’s reflection…

The breakdown of the world, of thought, of life — the experience of absolute collapse, of the horror of the vacuum, is already close the infinite zero-point reached immediately and effortlessly by schizophrenia. Even in a joyous mode when it recognizes the properly affirmative component of the revelation of cosmos as production, production as multiplicity, multiplicity as it opens onto the infinite or the future. (Only the infinity of the future can become-equal to a life.)

That spirit which fixes a beginning in space and time, fixes it without fixing itself; it exemplifies the possibility of atemporality and the heresy of the asignifying, even while founding the possibility of piety and dogma.

The disaster presents thought and language with their cosmic doubles; thought encounters a disaster in the way a subject encounters a radical outside, a death.

Only selection answers to chaos, to the infinite horizon of a life — virtually mapping infinite potential planes of organization onto a singular line of development. Only selection, only the possibility of philosophy, points beyond the inevitability of disaster.

The disaster and its aversion is the basic orientation of critical thought; thinking the disaster: this impossible task is the critical cultural aim of art and writing. Speaking the truth of the disaster is perhaps impossible. A life encounters disaster as the annihilating of the code itself; not merely a decoding but the alienation from the essence of matter or speech or language. The means to thinking the disaster lie in poetic imagination, the possibility of the temporal retrojection of narrative elements; the disaster can be thought only through “unthinking” it: in the capacity of critical or poetic imagination to explore the means by which a disaster was retroactively averted. The counterfactual acquires a new and radical dimension: not the theological dimension of salvation, but a clinical dimension — the power to of think the transformation of the conditions of the disaster.

How animals predict earthquakes (BBC)

04/11/2012UncategorizedAnimais, Desastre, Incerteza, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Previsão, Semiótica, Terremotosrenzotaddei

1 December 2011

By Victoria Gill – Science reporter, BBC Nature

Common toad Can pond-dwelling animals pick up pre-earthquake signals?

Animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater that occur when an earthquake is about to strike.

This, scientists say, could be the cause of bizarre earthquake-associated animal behaviour.

Researchers began to investigate these chemical effects after seeing a colony of toads abandon its pond in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009 – days before a quake.

They suggest that animal behaviour could be incorporated into earthquake forecasting.

When you think of all of the many things that are happening to these rocks, it would be weird if the animals weren’t affected in some way” – Rachel GrantThe Open University

The team’s findings are published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In this paper, they describe a mechanism whereby stressed rocks in the Earth’s crust release charged particles that react with the groundwater.

Animals that live in or near groundwater are highly sensitive to any changes in its chemistry, so they might sense this days before the rocks finally “slip” and cause a quake.

The team, led by Friedemann Freund from Nasa and Rachel Grant from the UK’s Open University hope their hypothesis will inspire biologists and geologists to work together, to find out exactly how animals might help us recognise some of the elusive signs of an imminent earthquake.

Strange behaviour

The L’Aquila toads are not the first example of strange animal behaviour before a major seismic event. There have been reports throughout history of reptiles, amphibians and fish behaving in unusual ways just before an earthquake struck.

STRANGE OR NOT

In July 2009, just hours after a large earthquake in San Diego, local residents discovered dozens of Humboldt squid washed up on beaches. These deep sea squid are usually found at depths of between 200 and 600m
At 5.58am on 28 June 1992 the ground began to shake in the Mojave Desert, California, right in the middle of a scientific study on desert harvester ants. Measurements revealed the ants did not change their behaviour at all during the earthquake, the largest to strike the US in four decades.

In 1975, in Haicheng, China, for example, many people spotted snakes emerging from their burrows a month before the city was hit by a large earthquake.

This was particularly odd, because it occurred during the winter. The snakes were in the middle of their annual hibernation, and with temperatures well below freezing, venturing outside was suicide for the cold-blooded reptiles.

But each of these cases – of waking reptiles, fleeing amphibians or deep-sea fish rising to the surface – has been an individual anecdote. And major earthquakes are so rare that the events surrounding them are almost impossible to study in detail.

This is where the case of the L’Aquila toads was different.

Toad exodus

Ms Grant, a biologist from the Open University, was monitoring the toad colony as part of her PhD project.

“It was very dramatic,” she recalled. “It went from 96 toads to almost zero over three days.”

Ms Grant published her observations in the Journal of Zoology.

“After that, I was contacted by Nasa,” she told BBC Nature.

Scientists at the US space agency had been studying the chemical changes that occur when rocks are under extreme stress. They wondered if these changes were linked to the mass exodus of the toads.

Their laboratory-based tests have now revealed, not only that these changes could be connected, but that the Earth’s crust could directly affect the chemistry of the pond that the toads were living and breeding in at the time.

Toads mating (c) Rachel Grant All of the toads left the breeding colony days before the 2009 earthquake

Nasa geophysicist Friedemann Freund showed that, when rocks were under very high levels of stress – for example by the “gargantuan tectonic forces” just before an earthquake, they release charged particles.

These charged particles can flow out into the surrounding rocks, explained Dr Freund. And when they arrive at the Earth’s surface they react with the air – converting air molecules into charged particles known as ions.

“Positive airborne ions are known in the medical community to cause headaches and nausea in humans and to increase the level of serotonin, a stress hormone, in the blood of animals,” said Dr Freund. They can also react with water, turning it into hydrogen peroxide.

This chemical chain of events could affect the organic material dissolved in the pond water – turning harmless organic material into substances that are toxic to aquatic animals.

It’s a complicated mechanism and the scientists stress that it needs to be tested thoroughly.

But, Dr Grant says this is the first convincing possible mechanism for a “pre-earthquake cue” that aquatic, semi-aquatic and burrowing animals might be able to sense and respond to.

“When you think of all of the many things that are happening to these rocks, it would be weird if the animals weren’t affected in some way,” she said.

Dr Freund said that the behaviour of animals could be one of a number of connected events that might forecast an earthquake.

“Once we understand how all of these signals are connected,” he told BBC Nature, “if we see four of five signals all pointing in [the same] direction, we can say, ‘ok, something is about to happen’.”

* * *

Toads can ‘predict earthquakes’ and seismic activity

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

Common toad (Bufo bufo)

Common toads sense danger

Common toads appear to be able to sense an impending earthquake and will flee their colony days before the seismic activity strikes.

The evidence comes from a population of toads which left their breeding colony three days before an earthquake that struck L’Aquila in Italy in 2009.

How toads sensed the quake is unclear, but most breeding pairs and males fled.

They reacted despite the colony being 74km from the quake’s epicentre, say biologists in the Journal of Zoology.

It is hard to objectively and quantifiably study how animals respond to seismic activity, in part because earthquakes are rare and unpredictable.

Some studies have been done on how domestic animals respond, but measuring the response of wild animals is more difficult.

Even those that have been shown to react, such as fish, rodents and snakes tend to do so shortly before an earthquakes strikes, rather than days ahead of the event.

However, biologist Dr Rachel Grant of the Open University, in Milton Keynes, UK, was routinely studying the behaviour of various colonies of common toads on a daily basis in Italy around the time a massive earthquake struck.

Her studies included a 29-day period gathering data before, during and after the earthquake that hit Italy on 6 April 2009.

The quake, a 6.3-magnitude event, struck close to L’Aquila city, about 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome.

Dr Grant was studying toads 74km away in San Ruffino Lake in central Italy, when she recorded the toads behaving oddly.

Five days before the earthquake, the number of male common toads in the breeding colony fell by 96%.

Common frogs (Rana temporaria) mating

AMPHIBIAN PHENOMENA

Dr Grant has also shown that many amphibians around the world synchronise their mating activity by the full Moon, a phenomenon not reported before

The world’s first truly monogamous amphibian was described earlier this year

Listen to a common toad croaking

That is highly unusual for male toads: once they have bred, they normally remain active in large numbers at breeding sites until spawning has finished.

Yet spawning had barely begun at the San Ruffino Lake site before the earthquake struck.

Also, no weather event could be linked to the toads’ disappearance.

Three days before the earthquake, the number of breeding pairs also suddenly dropped to zero.

While spawn was found at the site up to six days before the earthquake, and again six days after it, no spawn was laid during the so-called earthquake period – the time from the first main shock to the last aftershock.

“Our study is one of the first to document animal behaviour before, during and after an earthquake,” says Dr Grant.

She believes the toads fled to higher ground, possibly where they would be at less risk from rock falls, landslides and flooding.

Sensing danger

Exactly how the toads sense impending seismic activity is unclear.

The shift in the toads’ behaviour coincided with disruptions in the ionosphere, the uppermost electromagnetic layer of the earth’s atmosphere, which researchers detected around the time of the L’Aquila quake using a technique known as very low frequency (VLF) radio sounding.

Such changes to the atmosphere have in turn been linked by some scientists to the release of radon gas, or gravity waves, prior to an earthquake.

In the case of the L’Aquila quake, Dr Grant could not determine what caused the disruptions in the ionosphere.

However, her findings do suggest that the toads can detect something.

“Our findings suggest that toads are able to detect pre-seismic cues such as the release of gases and charged particles, and use these as a form of earthquake early warning system,” she says.

Ants ignore quakes

One other study has quantified an animal’s response to a major earthquake.

Researchers had the serendipitous opportunity to measure how the behaviour of the desert harvester ant (Messor pergandei) changed as the ground began to tremble in the Mojave Desert, California, on 28 June 1992.

The largest quake to hit the US in four decades struck during the middle of an ongoing study, which measured how many ants walked the trails to and from the colony, the distributions of worker ants and even how much carbon dioxide the ants produced.

However, in response to that 7.4 magnitude quake, the ants did not appear to alter their behaviour at all.

ITALIAN EARTHQUAKE

Use this map to explore coverage of the Italian earthquake in video, audio, pictures and text

After the quake, L’Aquila was described as a ‘broken city’

Read ‘A history of deadly earthquakes’

The repo girl is at the door (London Review of Books)

04/11/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Furacão Sandy, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Mike Davis, 3 November 2012

http://www.lrb.co.uk

In the spirit of Donald Rumsfeld we might distinguish between natural inevitabilities and unnatural inevitabilities. Someday, for example, the precarious flank of the massive Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands will collapse and send a mega-tsunami across the Atlantic. The damage from Boston to New York City will dwarf last year’s disaster in Japan. It’s inevitable, but volcanologists don’t know whether the destabilising eruption will occur tomorrow or in five thousand years. So for now, it’s merely a titillating topic for NOVA or the National Geographic Channel.

Another, much more frequent example of natural inevitability is the pre-global-warming hurricane cycle. Two or three times each century a perfect storm has crashed into the US Atlantic seaboard and wreaked havoc as far as the Great Lakes. But a $20 billion disaster every few decades is why we have an insurance industry. And even the loss, now and then, of an entire city to nature (San Francisco in 1906 or New Orleans in 2005) is an affordable tragedy.

But the construction since 1960 of several trillion dollars’ worth of prime real estate on barrier islands, bay fill, recycled swamps and coastal lowlands has radically transformed the calculus of loss. Subtract every carbon dioxide molecule added to the atmosphere in the last thirty years and ‘ordinary’ storms would still collect ever larger tolls from certifiably insane coastal overdevelopment.

Carbon, however, has never been more prosperous. Global emissions, by the most optimistic estimate, conform to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s ‘worst case’ scenario. The World Bank, for its part, now accepts the inevitability of a global temperature increase of at least 2 degrees Celsius – near the famous ‘red line’ of the last decade’s climate Cassandras. The Bank, moreover, is refocusing developmental aid from mitigation to adaptation.

This is the true meaning of Hurricane Sandy: the repo girl is at the door. Climate change adaptation is a synonym for a multi-trillion-dollar reconstruction of urban coastal infrastructure and land-use patterns. Imitate the Dutch or live in Waterworld.

How long will it take for this realisation to percolate through the tumoured brain of American politics? Until 2006, American public opinion was broadly in step with European concerns about global warming. Following Climategate, however, the energy-industry-subsidised right went on the offensive and polls recorded a dramatic decline in public perception of climate change as a scientific fact.

Even more surprisingly, opinion surveys tracking public reactions to extreme climate events, like the recent epic drought in the Great Plains, have failed to detect significant change in opinion. The presidential race, meanwhile, has largely been a contest about which candidate stoops lowest to administer oral sex to fossil fuel producers.

The business press exults in the brilliant future of shale gas and non-traditional oil. The USA, for the first time in 63 years, is a net exporter of oil products. And we are locked into fossil fuel dependence for another generation or two.

Alternatives are dissolving. Creating green jobs, the major industrial strategy of the Obama administration, has been a complete bust thanks to the shale gas revolution and China’s dumping of cheap solar energy cells on the world market. The meltdown of Europe’s carbon trading system, moreover, has hardly bolstered the credibility of ‘cap and trade’ in an American recession.

Hard rains and rising tides on the Jersey shore, alas, do not automatically translate into enthusiasm about renewable energy or an urgency to build dykes. Eventually, however, the change must come and Washington will start to pay the compound interest for failing to mitigate warming or reform land use.

But this isn’t the truly bad news. The grimmest reckoning is the inverse relationship between the costs of climate change adaptation in rich countries and the amount of aid available to poorer countries. The tropical and semi-tropical poor countries that are least responsible for creating a greenhouse planet will bear the greatest burden of coastal inundation, extreme weather, and agricultural water shortages. Not that it was ever likely that the emitters would ride to the rescue of the poor people downstream, but Sandy is the beginning of the race for the lifeboats on the Titanic.

O lobo mau (FSP)

04/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Estados Unidos, Furacão Sandy, Geopolítica, Incertezarenzotaddei

04/11/2012 – 03h30

Carlos Heitor Cony

RIO DE JANEIRO – Um dos motivos do nosso orgulho nacional, que o próprio Lula invocou há tempos, é que não temos vulcões nem terremotos. Nossas relações com o planeta Terra são relativamente boas, temos enchentes que não chegam ao nível de furacões. Os nossos temporais produzem vítimas e estragos, mas a culpa não chega a ser da natureza, mas da legislação e da fiscalização nas áreas de risco. As tragédias que sofremos neste setor poderiam ser minimizadas.

Com os Estados Unidos a barra é mais pesada. Na Costa Oeste, os terremotos, e, na Costa Leste, os furacões. No meio, entre os dois litorais, os tornados. O país mais rico e poderoso em tecnologia ainda não encontrou um sistema que controlasse os desvarios da natureza. É tão indefeso diante das catástrofes como as ilhas Papuas, que, aliás, sofrem menos neste departamento.

Vimos as cenas provocadas pelo furacão Sandy, que praticamente reduziu Nova York, por algumas horas, a uma cidade que poderia integrar a Baixada Fluminense.

Felizmente, o povo americano sabe se virar em situações iguais. Em setembro de 1985, enfrentei o furacão Glória, estava em White Plains, as autoridades pediam que se enchessem as banheiras para impedir que elas voassem. É a síndrome do Lobo Mau que destrói a choupana dos Três Porquinhos com seu sopro formidável.

Passei horas grudando fitas gomadas nas janelas, reforçando os vidros que se estraçalhavam. Clima de fim de mundo. Os supermercados foram esvaziados, num deles cheguei a comprar latas de sardinhas feitas em Niterói. Tinha a volta marcada para o dia seguinte, a companhia aérea me localizou e me aconselhou a ir para o JFK enquanto houvesse trânsito regular. Dormi duas noites no aeroporto, em cima das minhas malas. “God bless America”.

De Sandy a Deus (FSP)

03/11/2012UncategorizedCulpa, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Furacão Sandy, Geopolítica, História, Incerteza, Justiça, Memória, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsão, Religiãorenzotaddei

WALTER CENEVIVA

Algo me diz que a aproximação de Brasil, África do Sul e Austrália será boa para os três países

SE HOUVESSE um supremo tribunal interplanetário para julgar a culpa pelos efeitos dramáticos do furacão Sandy, gerados pelos habitantes da Terra contra a natureza, talvez a decisão fosse condenatória. As mortes e a destruição decorrentes do Sandy justificariam uma pergunta hoje de uso comum: como ficaria a dosimetria? Quem foi, e em que grau, responsável pelo mau uso da superfície, do ar e das entranhas do planeta no hemisfério norte?

O limite da pergunta se explica. Nós, do hemisfério sul, começamos a intervir na vida dos continentes há menos de 600 anos. Os do norte assinalaram sua presença há uns 12.000 anos -boa parte do hemisfério sul era desconhecida pelo menos até o século 16.

Esses 600 anos marcaram a ocupação de todo planeta. Mesmo assim, só no século 20 surgiram muitas das duas centenas de nações novas, com independência ao menos formal. Desapareceram colônias de países europeus e asiáticos nos cinco continentes.

O avanço dos conquistadores eurasiáticos nessa área marcou a história da Terra. O remanescente apenas alcançou o nível de vida civilizada, segundo os padrões ocidentais, quando conquistadores europeus se instalaram no México e nos Estados Unidos e igualmente com a verificação da terra que se sabia existir na latitude atingida por Pedro Álvares Cabral.

Percebo a pergunta do leitor: por qual a razão uma coluna jurídica precisa dar tantas referências geográficas? Simples: a Constituição brasileira enuncia princípios que, favorecendo relações internacionais, preservam, no art. 4º, a independência nacional; garantem regras de autodeterminação dos povos e de não intervenção. O mesmo resulta do art. 21, I (relações com outros Estados e organizações internacionais), colocando sob o presidente da República a condução do relacionamento externo.

O aprofundamento do exame impõe o conhecimento das áreas envolvidas. Existem três países de grande extensão territorial ao sul do Equador -Austrália, África do Sul e Brasil- com expressão bem marcada no cenário internacional. Os 50 milhões de sul-africanos ocupam 1,2 milhões de quilômetros quadrados, muito menos que os 7,7 milhões da amplitude australiana, mas de população rarefeita e modesta, na casa dos 21 milhões. Ambos menores que o Brasil nos dois quesitos, pois somos 192 milhões espalhados em 8,3 milhões de quilômetros quadrados, com milhares de cidades.

Dois outros pontos diferenciam os três países: hoje se pode dizer que o território brasileiro está inteiramente ocupado. Não a Austrália, nem tanto por ser o país mais plano do mundo, mas pelos seus quatro grandes desertos. A África do Sul ainda vive consequências da política da separação entre brancos a negros, até a segunda metade do século 20.

Dentre os três, se for o caso de composição uniforme dos interesses multinacionais, nosso país tem presença marcante, o que não obsta a associação dos três para percorrer caminho mais adequado para o futuro comum. A composição dos instrumentos legais para viabilizar a aproximação tem a vantagem de facilitar o acesso marítimo, pelo Oceano Atlântico e pelo Indico, só no hemisfério sul. Algo me diz que, de Sandy a Deus, a aproximação do sul será boa para os três na linha reta do trópico de Capricórnio.

It’s Global Warming, Stupid (Bloomberg)

01/11/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, jornalismo, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Paul M. Barrett on November 01, 2012

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/its-global-warming-stupid

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.

Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S.

If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.

On Oct. 17 the giant German reinsurance company Munich Re issued a prescient report titled Severe Weather in North America. Globally, the rate of extreme weather events is rising, and “nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” From 1980 through 2011, weather disasters caused losses totaling $1.06 trillion. Munich Re found “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” By contrast, there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.” Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,” the report said, “though it influences various perils in different ways.”

Global warming “particularly affects formation of heat waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity,” Munich Re said. This July was the hottest month recorded in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that two-thirds of the continental U.S. suffered drought conditions this summer.

Granted, Munich Re wants to sell more reinsurance (backup policies purchased by other insurance companies), so maybe it has a selfish reason to stir anxiety. But it has no obvious motive for fingering global warming vs. other causes. “If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible,” said Peter Hoppe, the company’s chief of geo-risks research, “all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”

Which raises the question of what alerts and measures to undertake. In his book The Conundrum, David Owen, a staff writer at theNew Yorker, contends that as long as the West places high and unquestioning value on economic growth and consumer gratification—with China and the rest of the developing world right behind—we will continue to burn the fossil fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Fast trains, hybrid cars, compact fluorescent light bulbs, carbon offsets—they’re just not enough, Owen writes.

Yet even he would surely agree that the only responsible first step is to put climate change back on the table for discussion. The issue was MIA during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane.

Mitt Romney has gone from being a supporter years ago of clean energy and emission caps to, more recently, a climate agnostic. On Aug. 30, he belittled his opponent’s vow to arrest climate change, made during the 2008 presidential campaign. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Romney told the Republican National Convention in storm-tossed Tampa. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Two months later, in the wake of Sandy, submerged families in New Jersey and New York urgently needed some help dealing with that rising-ocean stuff.

Obama and his strategists clearly decided that in a tight race during fragile economic times, he should compete with Romney by promising to mine more coal and drill more oil. On the campaign trail, when Obama refers to the environment, he does so only in the context of spurring “green jobs.” During his time in office, Obama has made modest progress on climate issues. His administration’s fuel-efficiency standards will reduce by half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks by 2025. His regulations and proposed rules to curb mercury, carbon, and other emissions from coal-fired power plants are forcing utilities to retire some of the dirtiest old facilities. And the country has doubled the generation of energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind.

Still, renewable energy accounts for less than 15 percent of the country’s electricity. The U.S. cannot shake its fossil fuel addiction by going cold turkey. Offices and factories can’t function in the dark. Shippers and drivers and air travelers will not abandon petroleum overnight. While scientists and entrepreneurs search for breakthrough technologies, the next president should push an energy plan that exploits plentiful domestic natural gas supplies. Burned for power, gas emits about half as much carbon as coal. That’s a trade-off already under way, and it’s worth expanding. Environmentalists taking a hard no-gas line are making a mistake.

Conservatives champion market forces—as do smart liberals—and financial incentives should be part of the climate agenda. In 2009 the House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation that would have rewarded more nimble industrial players that figure out how to use cleaner energy. The bill died in the Senate in 2010, a victim of Tea Party-inspired Republican obstructionism and Obama’s decision to spend his political capital to push health-care reform.

Despite Republican fanaticism about all forms of government intervention in the economy, the idea of pricing carbon must remain a part of the national debate. One politically plausible way to tax carbon emissions is to transfer the revenue to individuals. Alaska, which pays dividends to its citizens from royalties imposed on oil companies, could provide inspiration (just as Romneycare in Massachusetts pointed the way to Obamacare).

Ultimately, the global warming crisis will require global solutions. Washington can become a credible advocate for moving the Chinese and Indian economies away from coal and toward alternatives only if the U.S. takes concerted political action. At the last United Nations conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, the world’s governments agreed to seek a new legal agreement that binds signatories to reduce their carbon emissions. Negotiators agreed to come up with a new treaty by 2015, to be put in place by 2020. To work, the treaty will need to include a way to penalize countries that don’t meet emission-reduction targets—something the U.S. has until now refused to support.

If Hurricane Sandy does nothing else, it should suggest that we need to commit more to disaster preparation and response. As with climate change, Romney has displayed an alarmingly cavalier attitude on weather emergencies. During one Republican primary debate last year, he was asked point-blank whether the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ought to be turned back to the states. “Absolutely,” he replied. Let the states fend for themselves or, better yet, put the private sector in charge. Pay-as-you-go rooftop rescue service may appeal to plutocrats; when the flood waters are rising, ordinary folks welcome the National Guard.

It’s possible Romney’s kill-FEMA remark was merely a pander to the Right, rather than a serious policy proposal. Still, the reconfirmed need for strong federal disaster capability—FEMA and Obama got glowing reviews from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Romney supporter—makes the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign-trail statement all the more reprehensible.

The U.S. has allowed transportation and other infrastructure to grow obsolete and deteriorate, which poses a threat not just to public safety but also to the nation’s economic health. With once-in-a-century floods now occurring every few years, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the country’s biggest city will need to consider building surge protectors and somehow waterproofing its enormous subway system. “It’s not prudent to sit here and say it’s not going to happen again,” Cuomo said. “I believe it is going to happen again.”

David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy, noted in an Oct. 29 blog post that Sandy also brought his hometown, Washington, to a standstill, impeding affairs of state. To lessen future impact, he suggested burying urban and suburban power lines, an expensive but sensible improvement.

Where to get the money? Rothkopf proposed shifting funds from post-Sept. 11 bureaucratic leviathans such as the Department of Homeland Security, which he alleges is shot through with waste. In truth, what’s lacking in America’s approach to climate change is not the resources to act but the political will to do so. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that two-thirds of Americans say there is “solid evidence” the earth is getting warmer. That’s down 10 points since 2006. Among Republicans, more than half say it’s either not a serious problem or not a problem at all.

Such numbers reflect the success of climate deniers in framing action on global warming as inimical to economic growth. This is both shortsighted and dangerous. The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.

Scientific Illiteracy: Why The Italian Earthquake Verdict is Even Worse Than it Seems (Time)

01/11/2012UncategorizedCulpa, Desastre, Incerteza, Itália, Justiça, Política, Previsão, Terremoto, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Jeffrey Kluger – Oct. 24, 2012

image: An aerial view of the destruction in the city of L'Aquila, central Italy, April 6, 2009. GUARDIA FORESTALE HANDOUT / AP. An aerial view of the destruction in the city of L’Aquila, central Italy, April 6, 2009.

Yesterday was a very good day for stupid — better than any it’s had in a while. Stupid gets fewer good days in the 21st century than it used to get, but it enjoyed a great ride for a long time — back in the day when there were witches to burn and demons to exorcise and astronomers to put on trial for saying that the Earth orbits around the sun.

But yesterday was a reminder of stupid’s golden era, when an Italian court sentenced six scientists and a government official to six years in prison on manslaughter charges, for failing to predict a 2009 earthquake that killed 300 people in the town of l’Aquila. The defendants are also required to pay €7.8 million ($10 million) in damages. “I’m dejected, despairing,” said one of the scientists, Enzo Boschi, in a statement to Italian media. “I still don’t understand what I’m accused of.”

As well he shouldn’t. The official charge brought against the researchers, who were members of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), was based on a meeting they had in the week leading up to the quake, at which they discussed the possible significance of recent seismic rumblings that had been detected in the vicinity of l’Aquila. They concluded that it was “unlikely,” though not impossible, that a serious quake would occur there and thus did not order the evacuation of the town. This was both sound science and smart policy.

The earthquake division of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that the world is shaken by several million earthquakes each year, most of which escape notice either because they are too small or are in remote areas that are poorly monitored. An average of 50 earthquakes do manage to register on global seismographs every day, or about 18,000 annually. The overwhelming majority do not lead to major quakes and the technology does not exist to determine which ones will. The best earthquake forecasters can do is apply their knowledge and experience to each case, knowing that you can’t evacuate 50 towns or cities every day — and knowing too that sometimes you will unavoidably, even tragically, be wrong.

“If scientists can be held personally and legally responsible for situations where predictions don’t pan out, then it will be very hard to find scientists to stick their necks out in the future,” said David Oglesby, an associate professor on the earth sciences faculty of the University of California, Riverside, according to CNN.com.

The Italian seismologists are appealing their sentences and the global outcry over the wrong-headedness of the ruling will likely weigh in their favor. But whatever the outcome of their case, they’re really just the most recent victims of the larger, ongoing problem of scientific illiteracy.

Just the day after the ruling came down, University of Michigan researchers released the latest results from the Generation X Report, a longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation that has been tracking the Gen X cohort since 1986. One of the smaller but more troubling data points in the new release was the finding that only 43% of Gen Xers (53% of males and 32% of females) can correctly identify a picture of a spiral galaxy — or know that we live in one.

Certainly, it’s possible to move successfully through life without that kind of knowledge. “Knowing your cosmic address is not a necessary job skill,” concedes study author Jon D. Miller of the University of Michigan, in a release accompanying the report. But not knowing it does suggest a certain lack of familiarity with the larger themes of the physical universe — and that has implications. It’s of a piece with the people who believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed, or the 50% of Americans who do not believe that human beings evolved from apes, or the 1 on 5 who, like Galileo’s inquisitors, don’t believe the Earth revolves around the sun.

More troubling than these types of individual illiteracy are the larger, population-wide ones that have a direct impact on public policy. As my colleague Bryan Walsh observed, the issue of climate change received not a single mention in all three of this year’s presidential debates, and has barely been flicked at on the campaign trail. Part of that might simply be combat fatigue; we’ve been having the climate argument for 25 years. But the fact is there shouldn’t be any argument at all. Serious scientists who doubt that climate change is a real threat are down to just a handful of wild breeding pairs. But sowing doubt about the matter has been a thriving industry of conservatives for decades — most recently in the form of a faux scientific study published by the Cato Institute, that purports to debunk climate science as fatally flawed at best or a hoax at worst. Speaking of a federally funded and Congressionally mandated report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program that responsibly reviewed the state of climate science, the Cato publication argues:

It is immediately obvious that the intent of the report is not to provide a accurate [sic] scientific assessment of the current and future impacts of climate change in the United States, but to confuse the reader with a loose handling of normal climate[italics theirs]…presented as climate change events.

Well, no, but never mind. Our willingness to believe in junk science like this exacts a very real price — in an electorate that won’t demand action from its leaders on a matter of global significance; in parents who leave their babies unvaccinated because someone sent them a blog post fraudulently linking vaccines to autism; in young gays and lesbians forced to submit to “conversion therapy” to change the unchangeable; in a team of good Italian scientists who may spend six years in jail for failing to predict the unpredictable. No one can make us get smart about things we don’t want to get smart about. But every day we fail to do so is another good day for stupid — and another very bad one for all of us.

Itália condena sete cientistas por não prever terremoto (Folha de São Paulo)

24/10/2012Uncategorizedciência, Culpa, Desastre, Incerteza, Justiça, Mediação tecnológica, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Terremotosrenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4609, de 23 de Outubro de 2012.

Em 2009, o abalo sísmico em L’Aquila matou mais de 300 pessoas e deixou cerca de 65 mil desabrigadas. Justiça alega que os especialistas foram negligentes.

Um tribunal da Itália condenou ontem (22) sete cientistas a cumprir seis anos de prisão por não terem previsto o terremoto que atingiu o país em 2009, na cidade de L’Aquila, região de Abruzzo. Mais de 300 pessoas morreram.

Todos os cientistas, que vão recorrer em liberdade, eram membros da Comissão Nacional para Previsão e Prevenção de Riscos. Foram acusados de negligência, por não terem analisado corretamente as possibilidades do terremoto acontecer e, assim, alertar as autoridades.

Entre os sete condenados estão grandes nomes da ciência italiana, como o professor Enzo Boschi, que presidiu o Instituto Nacional de Geofísica e Vulcanologia, e o vice-diretor da Defesa Civil, Bernardo de Bernardinis.

Cientistas de diversas partes do mundo protestaram contra a decisão do tribunal em condená-los por homicídio culposo (quando não há intenção de matar). Em protesto, uma carta com mais de 5.000 assinaturas de cientistas foi entregue ao presidente italiano, Giorgio Napolitano, alegando que a ciência não possui meios para prever terremotos, e que o processo pode impedir que futuramente especialistas aconselhem governos a respeito de riscos sísmicos.

Imprevisível – Segundo a técnica de sismologia do Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas da USP (IAG-USP) Célia Fernandes, é muito difícil identificar o momento exato em que irá acontecer um abalo sísmico. “Todos os profissionais de sismologia trabalham com o objetivo de prever terremotos, mas não existe regra na natureza. Mesmo a recorrência de sismos não é garantia de que um terremoto de grande magnitude está prestes a acontecer”, afirma.

Os cientistas se reuniram na cidade de L’Aquila em 31 de março de 2009, seis dias antes do terremoto, e não comunicaram sobre a chance de um abalo sísmico. Para o tribunal, eles falharam por terem subestimado os riscos, limitando a ação das autoridades públicas, que não tiveram tempo suficiente para tomar medidas necessárias para proteger a população.

Segundo os promotores, uma série de tremores de baixo nível atingiu a região nos meses que antecederam o terremoto e isso deveria ter sido interpretado pelos especialistas como um sinal do que estava para acontecer.

O terremoto de magnitude 6,3 graus atingiu L’Aquila em abril de 2009. Além das mortes, também feriu outras 1.500 pessoas. Estima-se que 65 mil tenham ficado desabrigadas. A condenação dos cientistas ainda não é definitiva. Eles devem entrar com um recurso.

* * *

Artigos:

David Alexander. An evaluation of medium-term recovery processes after the 6 April 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Central Italy. Environmental Hazards, iFirst.

Abstract

This article uses the earthquake of 6 April 2009 at L’Aquila, central Italy (magnitude 6.3) as a case history of processes of recovery from disaster. These are evaluated according to criteria linked to both vulnerability analysis and disaster risk-reduction processes. The short- and medium-term responses to the disaster are evaluated, and 11 criticisms are made of the Italian Government’s policy on transitional shelter, which has led to isolation, social fragmentation and deprivation of services. Government policy on disaster risk is further evaluated in the light of the UNISDR Hyogo Framework for Action. Lack of governance and democratic participation is evident in the response to disasters. It is concluded that without an adequately planned strategy for managing the long-term recovery process, events such as the L’Aquila earthquake open up Pandora’s box of unwelcome consequences, including economic stagnation, stalled reconstruction, alienation of the local population, fiscal deprivation and corruption. Such phenomena tend to perpetuate rather than reduce vulnerability to disasters.

“[…] science and scientists were not on trial. The hypothesis of culpability being tested in the courts referred to the failure to adopt a precautionary approach in the face of clear indications of impending seismic impact, not failure to predict an earthquake, and this is amply documented in official records”.

David E. Alexander. The L’Aquila Earthquake of 6 April 2009 and Italian Government Policy on Disaster Response. Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, Vol. 2, Iss. 4, 2010

Abstract

This paper describes the impact of the earthquake that struck the central Italian city of L’Aquila on 6 April 2009, killing 308 people and leaving 67 500 homeless. The pre-impact, emergency, and early recovery phases are discussed in terms of the nature and effectiveness of government policy. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Italy is evaluated in relation to the structure of civil protection and changes wrought by both the L’Aquila disaster and public scandals connected with the misappropriation of funds. Six of the most important lessons are derived from this analysis and related to DRR needs both in Italy and elsewhere in the world.

“As articulated at the meeting of the Commission on Major Risks on 31 March 2009, the Italian Government’s position was unequivocal: there was no cause for alarm. This attitude permeated its way down the ranks of the civil protection system. Then, at 00:30 hrs on Monday 6 April 2010, a tremor that was larger than usual shook L’Aquila. Residents rushed out of their houses in alarm. The strategy adopted by civil protection authorities was to tour the streets with loudspeakers advising people to calm down and return home. In the town of Pagánica, less than 10 km northeast of L’Aquila, residents did exactly that: in the ensuing main shock three hours later, eight of them died and 40 were seriously injured. In L’Aquila city I investigated one case in which a young lady had decided to remain out of doors after the foreshock, while her parents returned home. Their bodies were recovered by ﬁremen from a space barely 15 cm wide into which the building had compressed as it collapsed”.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Desastre

Moral Injuries and the Environment: Healing the Soul Wounds of the Body Politic (Science & Environmental Health Network)

Monbiot: The Gift of Death (The Guardian)

Why Sandy Has Meteorologists Scared, in 4 Images (The Atlantic)

A civilização do lixo (IHU-Online)

Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial (Slate)

Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists (Financial Post) + EANTH list reactions

OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.

Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change (Bill Moyers)

Saúde mental, outra vítima da mudança climática (IPS)

A system of disasters (SocialistWorker.org)

Call to Modernize Antiquated Climate Negotiations (Science Daily)

Government, Industry Can Better Manage Risks of Very Rare Catastrophic Events, Experts Say (Science Daily)

Estudo aumenta precisão ao simular clima (Folha de São Paulo)

Desastre natural é empecilho ao desenvolvimento do Brasil (O Globo)

Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists (The Guardian)

Apenas 6,2% dos municípios do País têm plano de prevenção de catástrofes (O Estado de São Paulo)

Cultural Dimensions of Climate Change Are Underestimated, Overlooked and Misunderstood (Science Daily)

Risk (Fractal Ontology)

How animals predict earthquakes (BBC)

Toads can ‘predict earthquakes’ and seismic activity

The repo girl is at the door (London Review of Books)

O lobo mau (FSP)

De Sandy a Deus (FSP)

It’s Global Warming, Stupid (Bloomberg)

Scientific Illiteracy: Why The Italian Earthquake Verdict is Even Worse Than it Seems (Time)

Itália condena sete cientistas por não prever terremoto (Folha de São Paulo)