The Destructive Force of Mother Nature

The horrors of Mother Nature were very clear this year as many places were blasted by the weather.

The US was hit with a number of destructive storms. Oklahoma was hit on the 31^st of May by a massive tornado. Named the Moore Tornado after the small city it had obliterated. The storm unfortunately claimed 24 lives. What made the Moore Tornado so horrifying was its sheer size, at a width of 4.2km (2.6 miles) it is the widest tornado ever recorded.

Source: Guardian

Unfortunately for America the Moore, Oklahoma tornado wasn’t the only natural disaster to hit the country. California was hit by particularly bad wildfires this year, several people died as a result. Yet it was Australia that received the most damage thanks to wildfires. Unseasonably high temperatures resulted in much of Australia being consumed by fire in October. Although fires raged only 70km west of Sydney, the highly populated city was spared any damage. The Australian wildfires did produce this photo of a family sheltering under a jetty. The image went viral as soon as it was released to the press.

India was hit unfortunately, by the largest Cyclone in over a decade. Cyclone Pailan struck India in October 2013 and affected the lives of over 13 million people. Considering how populated the area is, it is lucky that ‘only’ 45 people died.

The biggest loser in 2013 was the Philippines. On the 15^th of October (what is it with October?) an earthquake struck the middle of the Philippines and resulted in 222 people being reported dead. To make matters worse, the most destructive Typhoon in the history of the Philippines made landfall. It had one-minute sustained winds at 315km/h (196mph), which would make it the strongest typhoon ever recorded. With that in mind it is easy to see how it could claim the lives of 6,155 and cost $1.5 billion in damage.

The destructive force of Typhoon Haiyan
source: BBC

Now let’s talk about global warming. The planet is getting warmer and storms are becoming more destructive. Humans are the primary cause of it. This is not my opinion. I am not a global warming scientist and I am by no means an expert. So I defer to the scientific community to evaluate the situation. 99.9% of scientists who have studied the facts have come to the conclusion that there is man-made climate change.

Yet despite the scientific community’s so certain that global warming is real, the world has been slow to react. In the short run making your country greener is very expensive. Countries that are in the process of industrialising think that it is hypocritical of already industrialised countries to ask them to stop polluting. Especially after the industrialised countries have been doing it for up to 250 years!

We need to tackle global warming now. 2013 did not go well, let’s make 2014 the greenest year ever! 

Mother Nature

It was a rather devastating year thanks to mother nature. In Japan one of the largest recorded earthquakes ever occurred off its north eastern coast. Although the earthquake itself did little damage, it was the massive tsunami that followed that wreaked the devastation. Over 15,000 people were killed in a matter of minutes. The Fukushima Nuclear reactor nearly went into meltdown, which would have caused a Chernobyl-scale disaster according to experts. Thankfully, due to the bravery of a few men, the problem was solved. Yet this event raised the issue over the safety of nuclear power. As a reaction to the tsunami many nuclear reactors in Japan are being shut down and programs across the world have been suspended or cancelled. Unfortunately Japan was not the only country to experience earthquakes, New Zealand and Turkey both experienced two earthquakes in the same area of their countries.

Floods tore through many nations, Brazil had flooding in Rio de Janeiro and 500 lives were lost in the torrents. Floods also returned to Pakistan for the second year and although not as devastating as 2010, they still destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people. Australia and the Philippines also experienced devastating floods.

Statistics show that over the past few decades the cost of natural disasters has been, for the most part, rising. One of the problems is the world’s expanding population. Countries are becoming more overcrowded and people are being forced to live on flood plains and other places often subjected to natural disasters. This will inevitably cause a rise in the cost of natural disasters and will pose difficult tasks for the years ahead.

The Japanese tsunami as it came ashore.