Archive for the 'Disasters' Category

Big quake in Chile

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 weeks, 1 day ago
in Disasters
. 6 Comments

If you haven’t heard the news, there’s been a massive earthquake in Chile. Take your pick of the news sources – maybe the Beeb is your best bet.

Geologically, this one is far, far bigger than the Haiti quake – magnitude 8.8, compared to Haiti’s 7.0. That indicates roughly 500 times the energy has been released. However, Chile is a far wealthier country, and well prepared for earthquakes.

There’s a tsunami warning current for much of Australia’s eastern coastline. Initial reports across the Pacific indicate that the tsunami isn’t a big one, but if you live on the coast obviously take heed of the warning and stay away.

What is truth?

Published
by
Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
in Activism, Climate change, Disasters, Ethics, Language, Media, Politics, Science and Sociology
. 105 Comments

The other day, I mentioned Clive Hamilton’s series of posts on climate change denialism at The Drum. In today’s edition, Hamilton comments:

Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.

Indeed. But there’s something of a perception lurking around here that ’science’ is one thing and ‘politics’ another, which I think is false.

It’s certainly the case that whatever ammunition denialists use against climate science is not itself part of the ’skepticism’ which is said to be integral to the scientific method. Rather than proposing an alternative hypothesis which would better explain the range of observations made, any line of attack is used, no matter how contradictory with others it may be. So, what we have in denialist discourse is all politics, and no science. No scientific method.

It’s important to underline this point. What denialists cannot provide is anything which can approximate to a truth statement. Methodological doubt, Cartesian style, is supposed to be a prelude to the uncovering of a truth, not a rhetorical strategy of dismissal. Climate change skepticism, contrary to the claims of some of its proponents, has absolutely nothing to do with ‘The Enlightenment’. Quite the contrary.

Their other classic move is to hold science itself to an impossible standard. Somehow the findings of climate science have to be unequivocally true. What we actually see, then, in this contre-temps is a debate over what constitutes truth. Statements made by the IPCC, for instance, are couched in terms of Bayesian probabilities, rather than ‘predictions’. It’s the same form of statement as with genetic predispositions individuals may have to particular diseases; having such a predisposition does not imply that one will necessarily develop the disease. Probability is not destiny or fate. But probabilities of 90%, as in the IPCC’s Fourth Report, are very strong indeed.

But asking science to articulate truth, if truth is understood as incontrovertible knowledge, is asking it to do something it cannot do.

Continue reading ‘What is truth?’

Stuff white people do; or when flying a plane into a building isn’t terrorism

Published
by
Kim
4 weeks ago
in Disasters, Language, Media, Politics, Terrorism and USA
. 83 Comments

So the Unabomber of the Obama era (or should that be the Tea Party era?), Joe Stack, flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. And there’s a rant on the intertubes to justify his deed.

But, it’s not terrorism, apparently.

raving black lunatic asks a series of questions, including but not limited to this one:

How can you fly a plane into a building out of spite, and have folks call it “suicide by plane?” That’s like calling it “suicide by portable chest bomb.”

Though for a truly bizarre discussion, you might want to consult Australia’s own Catallaxy Files.

Balance?

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Disasters, Media and Politics
. 37 Comments

I’m not sure how this one slipped through:

What the longevity of almost all state and territory governments suggests is that it is difficult for an opposition to come to power except through the electorate’s view that it is time for a change… It is unlikely, however, that this will stop the Canberra press gallery working itself into a state of excitement over this year’s national and state votes.

From The Australian today.

In related news, I was somewhat heartened by Greg Hunt’s declining to start ranting and raving over the ’solar panels will burn your house down’ thing last night on Lateline, when effectively invited to do so by Tony Jones. The question followed a story which was clearly framed to build momentum for the ‘Peter Garrett Must Go’ campaign.

I thought, and still think, that Garrett’s position is worth debating, and as Roger Jones noted, the comments thread on the post here has been quite illuminating compared to the media coverage. But I’m not so sure that the press has the responsibility to collude in a campaign to take a ministerial scalp. My memory may well be faulty on this score, but I really don’t recall the same level of intensity and pursuit of Howard government ministers. Given recent admissions by AWB, it might be instructive to go back and look whether Alexander Downer faced constant front page stories on the Wheat for Arms scandal.

Sure, all the ingredients for a press frenzy are there in the insulation debacle, including human interest stories from relatives of those who tragically lost their lives, or workers who were injured themselves. But perspective seems sadly lacking, or even basic research, as Bernard Keane observes in Crikey today.

A dangerous accumulation of inflammatory rubbish

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Disasters, Environment, Politics, Science and Victoria
. 3 Comments

Max Rheese, who seems to aspire to the title of “Man of a Thousand Front Groups”, has a column in today’s Australian attacking the Victorian Government for not accepting the Parliamentary Environment and Natural Resources Committee recommendation of a prescribed burning target of 385,000 hectares per annum on public land.

I have previously explained what is wrong with this Big Dumb Number approach to bushfire hazard management. I have also previous linked to a submission on this matter by the Victorian National Parks Association and a scientific report by Chris Taylor on the Black Saturday fires. There is nothing in Rheese’s piece which hasn’t already been addressed in these sources and I simply recommend a re-reading.

However one thing does deserve additional comment. Rheese implies, and the OO has previously reported, that the 385,000 ha/annum figure was recommended by “departmental officers” from the Department of Environment and Sustainability. No such figure was recommended by the DSE in its submission to the relevant ENR inquiry, and when I discussed this matter with DSE officers when in Melbourne last July, they explained that the ENR Committee had come up with this figure itself on the basis of a “rudimentary interpretation” of data provided by DSE. This issue is also addressed by the VNPA.

Haiti: Social and historical contexts

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Developing world, Disasters, International, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 15 Comments

When disaster strikes, there’s always a reflex to suggest that politics is a dirty word, that humanitarian considerations trump any sort of consideration of the context of the impact of horrendous events. There’s something of the ‘act of God’ and nature/culture themes at work here, but perhaps that’s another story. In any case, it’s an impulse that should be resisted – because the response to disaster is and only can be organised through a political process, and the naturalisation of a disaster ridden landscape as a tabula rasa for the imposition of a particular mode of reconstruction is highly political, in the worst sense of that word.

Katrina, in this respect, is exemplary.

Haiti is another case in point, because the impact of the earthquake and the aftermath is so horrendous in large part because of the country’s history. Humans are complex creatures, and it’s possible to chew gum and walk at the same time. So there’s no necessary contradiction between, say, giving to Médecins Sans Frontières *and* seeking to understand what’s now happening in all its dimensions. We need to take great care not to strip those affected by disaster of agency, and to recognise their inalienable right to shape their own destinies; again a right that doesn’t negate a swift and well targeted humanitarian response. Continue reading ‘Haiti: Social and historical contexts’

Haiti

Published
by
Mark
2 months ago
in Disasters, International, Media and USA
. 45 Comments

Numerous stories on Australian television tonight indicated that aid, rescue efforts, and medical care are all reaching Haitians belatedly, very inadequately, and in a somewhat disorganised fashion. The logistical and other challenges involved in responding to a catastrophe of this magnitude are, of course, considerable. However, La Figa cites a number of reports which have not been widely disseminated in the US and other western media*:

Flights with aid, support and life saving equipment from other nations are being turned away from the airport as thousands of armed US and US troops arrive.

Full details are here. If accurate, this is very disturbing.

Previous LP discussion of the Haitian earthquake is here.

*Update: But see also this comment from jo.

Elsewhere: The latest from Médecins Sans Frontières.

Update [dk.au]: The Boston Globe has an amazing photo editor. They’ve compiled this series of photos (via Global Soc Prof)

Haiti: now what?

Published
by
Mercurius
2 months ago
in Disasters
. 63 Comments

I claim no special authority in the geopolitics of this subject. I’d like to promote fair-minded proposals of the “now what?” variety.

First, a disclosure/confession: Yes, it is ghoulish, and presumptious, and all those terrible things, to begin discussion of this topic while they’re still pulling victims from the rubble. I guess I’m just acting on the eternal human need to try and make sense of blind cruel disaster, so please forgive me the impulse. Any denunciations you wish to make for even raising this topic will only be agreed to, and doubly so, by me.

What’s the best solution here? A Marshall Plan/Berlin Airlift scenario? UN/US takeover of the country? Full-scale evacuation? Nothing so dramatic? None of the states affected by the 2004 tsunami collapsed, not even Burma; but is Haiti more vulnerable to anarchy? Do we even have a schema for such a benighted country being dealt what could be a mortal blow by the fist of nature? There are 10 million Haitians. What can they do now, where can they go, and how can the world help?

Update: [by MB] New post citing disturbing reports about aid being blocked by the US military’s control of the airport at Port-au-Prince.

some Haiti Earthquake numbers

Published
by
dk.au
2 months ago
in Disasters
. 23 Comments

7.0 – magnitude of the January 12 Earthquake
Update: 14: the number of deaths from a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Los Angeles where there a building codes, including those for earthquake resistance, and they’re actually enforced (via).
1593 – number of days since I’ve felt a spine-chilling feeling of descent into a Hobbesian state after hearing pleas for help. Only this time, it’s because

“Parliament has collapsed,” President Préval was quoted as saying. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

520 000: the number of $10 donations to the US Red Cross via SMS
1000: patients already treated by Medicins Sans Frontier, which has an inflatable hospital on the way. (Donate to MSF Australia here)
2: percentage of Haitians who stay in school beyond Grade 5 (h/t: Tyler Cowen)
1755: year of Lisbon Earthquake, a key catalyst of Enlightenment and conceptions of Natural Disaster.

Appeals:
AVAAZ: Stand with the people: 100% of funds to go to relief and reconstruction
Oxfam: Haiti Earthquake Appeal
PLAN: Haiti Earthquake Appeal

Update: Chris Blattman asks, ‘what is better than giving money?’ lobbying the US government to grant Haitians Temporary Protected Status.

Tyler Cowen: “… Very rapidly, President Obama needs to come to terms with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.”

The politics of climate change, the impossibility of conservatism, and the role of the imaginary

Published
by
Mark
2 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Apocalypse, Authoritarianism, Climate change, Disasters, Economics, Energy, Environment, History, International, Politics, Religion, Sociology and Technology
. 146 Comments

One of the accusations frequently made by climate change deniers or ’skeptics’ against those who would like to see concerted action taken to ameliorate the impacts of anthropogenic global warming is that of being somehow apocalyptic. A related charge is that climate change activism is somehow a screen or cover for an unstated political agenda.

Futile as the attempt to deny and disavow the fact that a process of climate change is occurring, and that human actors are causal agents, it’s nevertheless the case that this discourse is not without its effects in the world. So it’s worth analysing this phenomenon.

There is no doubt that apocalyptic politics are in style.

Writing in his recent First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, Slavoj Žižek diagnoses the range of contemporary apocalyptic politics. He quotes Ed Ayres:

We are being confronted by something so completely outside our collective experience that we don’t really see it, even when the evidence is overwhelming. For us, that “something” is a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us.

Žižek argues that “the dominant ideology is mobilising mechanisms of dissimulation and self-deception which include a will to ignorance”, and cites Ayres again to characterise this effect:

A general pattern of behaviour among threatened human societies is to become more blinkered, rather than more focused on the crisis, as they fail.

Continue reading ‘The politics of climate change, the impossibility of conservatism, and the role of the imaginary’

After Copenhagen

Published
by
Mark
2 months, 4 weeks ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Disasters, Economics, Energy, Environment, Imperialism, International, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 39 Comments

In the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, we’re starting to see some more thoughtful analyses which go beyond the proximate causes of the imbroglio to gesture to more structural factors. Robert has already cited George Monbiot’s recent blog post.

I’d like to take a look at a couple of other articles. Naomi Klein, writing for The Guardian, argues that Barack Obama was at fault. Anticipating criticism about the difficulties of getting anything through the US Senate, she nevertheless claims that Obama missed several opportunities to put climate change response much higher on the agenda, at a time when he still had massive political capital. There’s a real sense in which this is true, but Klein doesn’t search for the underlying reasons why Obama has acted the way he has, which go beyond the reflex accusations of being a sell-out (‘triangulating wolf in the guise of a liberal sheep’, you know the drill).

We’ve all been somewhat misled by the Obama as Bush antidote theme. George W. Bush’s regime, in many ways, was the last gasp of an Imperial ideology of leading the free world, or of making war on bits of it to make them free. The collapse of the conjuring trick which was supposed to pay for all this, and the increasing realisation that the US couldn’t make its desire reality purely by will (expressed through military force and propaganda) determines the conjuncture which Obama inherited. There’s a tendency to look to him as if he will actually give flesh to the bones of the carcass of the myth of American benevolence. But, in fact, his task is managing America’s decline. Thus, his actual behaviour, as opposed to his flights of rhetoric, demonstrates that America is now a nation among nations, looking to protect its own national interest rather than project some sort of salvational salve for the world’s woes. That should have been evident from Copenhagen.

It’s important to look beyond the quotidian, and understand that the sands of political economy were actually shifting beneath the feet of the delegates and negotiators at COP. That also implies that assumptions about a future based on straight extrapolation from the position pre-Copenhagen may be as dangerous as the assumption that climate change is itself a linear process, rather than the interaction of many complex factors and systems, human and non-human. While I don’t necessarily accept all that he argues, that necessary perspective is well displayed by ecological economist Brian Davey, writing at Open Democracy. With permission, under a Creative Commons licence, I’ve reproduced his piece over the fold. It provides much food for thought, as we come to grips with our collective responsibility to shape the planet’s future.

[Please click through to the original article for hyperlinks and diagrams.]

Continue reading ‘After Copenhagen’

D-Day for the Liberals? (And the government’s CPRS giveaway)

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Disasters, Howardia, Media, Policy and Politics
. 99 Comments

The Coalition are continuing their marathon climate change/leadership party room meeting after question time today. Clearly, agreement couldn’t be reached within the scheduled four hours. That’s significant in itself.

In developments so far, Andrew Robb has jumped ship, reports Bernard Keane at The Stump.

The government has made its offer on the Coalition amendments. Peter Martin has the text of Rudd’s press release. Writing in New Matilda, Ben Eltham characterises the deal thus:

Billions more taxpayer dollars will be sacrificed on the altar of making the emissions trading scheme palatable for big polluters.

It’s impossible to see this ‘bipartisan’ deal as anything other than a huge transfer from the household sector to the polluters, and one which, at least in the short term, will do nothing much to reduce emissions. The argument in favour is that it should be supported to lock in business and parts of the Coalition, in the hope that it can be improved over time. The argument against ‘pass now, improve later’ is put by Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog.

In today’s Crikey, Bernard Keane described the CPRS as the worst ever policy process this country has seen. It’s a textbook example, as well, of how politics can completely derail the ostensible intent of a piece of legislation, except insofar as it continues to provide the government with a talking point or two on the actual issue (and that’s not much of an exception!)… So all eyes in the commentariat will now doubt be on the implications for the Liberal leadership. Ludicrous outcomes such as a Kevin Andrews ascension are probably outside the realms of likelihood, but then who knows with this mob?

The issue has certainly crystallised almost all the ructions within the Liberals and between the Nats and moderate Liberals. Continued resentment of defeat, the counter-productive relationship with the media, the tendency to tear down any leader who won’t play the right wing game in all its purity and nuttiness, self-delusion about electoral politics. It’s all there. And none of it is remotely rational in a political sense, or any other.

More to come later…

UPDATE [Ben Eltham]: Sky News is reporting that Wilson Tuckey has moved a leadership spill motion …

Update [Mark]: Tuckey’s leadership spill suggestion failed. Perhaps he shouldn’t rely on The Australian for an assessment of numbers within the Liberal party room.

Update [Mark]: The farce continues, as Coalition members get angsty over whether the meeting should adjourn for a dinner break.

Update [Mark]: I suspect what’s going on now is they’re trying to work out what spin to put on an outcome which is completely chaotic, because both sides disagree as to what happened. If Turnbull, as leader, says that the meeting has decided to accept the deal, it seems to me that all they can do if they don’t agree is to take up Kevin Andrews’ kind offer and make him leader. Or Andrew Robb. Or Tony Abbott or someone. But all the blather about legitimacy surely is just hot air, unless they’re prepared to actually dispense with Turnbull.

Update: Turnbull is giving a press conference, pointing to his strong leadership, and claiming that he’s saved jobs. The Twitter buzz might be as good as place as any to follow what’s going on.

Update: SBS makes about as much sense as anyone could out of the result of the meeting.

Update: What Turnbull should do now.

Mad Max 4 to Rescue NSW Government or vice versa

Published
by
dk.au
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Disasters, Film, TV, Video etc, Levity and NSW Government
. 27 Comments

If Mad Max 2 was the Sistine Chapel of Punk as J.G. Ballard once quipped, then perhaps the Last Judgement is at hand! George Miller is going to commence pre-production of Mad Max 4 immediately in NSW. I’m guessing he’s taking a punt on the state most likely to provide, erm, free extras; what with rivers running dry and planning incompetence running rife. Add a liquid fuel disruption and we’ll see who has the last laugh…

A terrific video tribute to the first Maxes set to Motorhead’s Ace of Spades is below the jump. Parental supervision recommended for those easily offended by car accidents
(via Simon Sellars) Continue reading ‘Mad Max 4 to Rescue NSW Government or vice versa’

Stay or go attracts the sweet smell of spin

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months, 1 week ago
in Disasters, Melbourne and Victoria
. 23 Comments

Well, chalk one up for spin.

If you believe the headlines, the “stay or go” policy is being scrapped for days of “catastrophic” fire danger, the highest level in a revised fire danger scale.

On those days, and it is expected that there will be at least one day of such risk this summer, according to the ABC online report, “The Victorian Government’s advice on these days will be for people in bushfire-prone areas to leave their homes the night before or early in the morning.”

Continue reading ‘Stay or go attracts the sweet smell of spin’

Disasters

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months, 2 weeks ago
in Disasters
. 5 Comments

There appears to be no particular link between the earthquake on Sumatra and the earthquake-induced tsunami that devastated Samoa and surrounding Pacific islands, except the death and destruction both caused. The Sumatran quake is reported to have killed 1100 people, the Samoan tsunami around 140, with both tolls expected to rise. In both cases, many more people will have lost their homes and livelihoods.

As Quiggin notes, the best way to help at this stage is through cash to the relief agency of your choice. The Red Cross has an appeal for the Samoan tsunami, and will surely have one for the earthquake as well.