NewsTrust - Weather - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Mind-boggling tornado count, deaths raise hard questions about causes, warnings & response

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Andrew Freedman - May. 25 (Opinion) - Given the sheer volume of the tornado chatter, the online equivalent to a twister’s whipping winds, it’s useful to take a step back and review the important questions that need to be asked at this point, while reminding ourselves of what is generally known.

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Mississippi flooding: Let the river run

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Pal VanDevelder - May. 25 (Opinion) - What began on the upper Missouri River in 1951 is playing out this month in the flooding of the lower Mississippi and dozens of communities in its delta.

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Droughts, Floods And Food

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 07 (Opinion) - World prices of food are surging, and one major factor is the disruption caused by extreme weather.

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Editorial Observer: Haiti’s Futile Race Against the Rain

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Lawrence Downes - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - Haiti’s government and relief agencies must decide how to shelter more than a million people in a country with no good place to put them before the rainy season.

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Saving Haiti

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Root - By Joel Dreyfuss - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - Some countries are just not lucky. Haiti is one of those places where bad things keep happening. The massive earthquake that destroyed a large part of the 250-year-old capital city, Port-au-Prince, is just the latest blow for a country that can ill

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How will they figure the death toll from the earthquake in Haiti?

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Juliet Lapidos - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - CNN reported today that between 63,000 and 100,000 people have died as a result of the May 3 cyclone in Burma. According to the Washington Post, the death toll from Monday's earthquake in China has exceeded 12,000 and is expected to rise. Where do natural-disaster death estimates come from? Eyewitnesses and guesswork. Government relief workers and agents from NGOs assess stricken neighborhoods for casualties. They literally count bodies, take down reports from district officials or locals who have lost family members, and make estimates based on damage to infrastructure. (If there are 20 people missing and they all worked in a building that collapsed due to a tremor, the relief workers might count those 20 people as dead.) The workers then report back either to a government agency in charge of emergency assistance or to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. An aggregate figure filters down to national media outlets.

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In Japan, Concerns Blossom

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Yoko Tawada - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - In Tokyo, it no longer snows.

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Gustav upsets the GOP Convention but may be good for the GOP

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By John Dickerson - Sep. 01 (Opinion) - For the moment, the disaster benefits McCain, because like all great political moments, it allows him to act authentically and yet benefit politically. One of the worst political clichÃ©s actually is true at this moment: Good policy is good politics. All McCain has to do is keep his aides off the phones talking about the politics of the storm, and he'll be in a position to benefit from it. (And so far, he looks like he's done that, too.)

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Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not.

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:50:02 -0700

Washington Post - By Joel Achenbach - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - We're stuck on the notion that climate change is the culprit every time a natural disaster strikes. But that's just muddying the waters. We're heading into the heart of hurricane season, and any day now, a storm will barrel toward the United States, inspiring all the TV weather reporters to find a beach where they can lash themselves to a palm tree. We can be certain of two things: First, we'll be told that the wind is blowing very hard and the surf is up. Second, some expert will tell us that this storm might be a harbinger of global warming. Somewhere along the line, global warming became the explanation for everything. Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event -- a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning strike, an unfamiliar breeze, a strange tingling on the neck -- without immediately invoking the climate crisis. It causes earthquakes, plagues and backyard gardening disappointments. Weird fungus on your tomato plants? Classic sign of global warming. You are permitted to note, as a parenthetical, that no single weather calamity can be ascribed with absolute certainty (roll your eyes here to signal the exasperating fussiness of scientists) to what humans are doing to the atmosphere. But your tone will make it clear that this is just legalese, like the fine-print warnings on the flip side of a Lipitor ad.

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Hurricane Dean's big winner: sugar?

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:37:09 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Blake Hounshell - Aug. 22 (Opinion) - The storm has wrecked sugar crops in places like Belize and Martinique, and may cause damage in Mexico. Still, there's reason to be skeptical of Smith's optimism. The economies of sugar-producing countries in the Caribbean depend heavily on sugar, but they're still only a small piece of the global trade.

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Climate change sceptics criticise polar bear science

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 09:31:51 -0700

New Scientist - Jul. 01 (Review) - Soon, who receives funding for this and other work from Exxon-Mobil, has been attacking climate change science for several years. Three of the six other authors also have links to the oil industry. A reply to Soon's paper accuses him of ignoring data that does not fit his argument and of misinterpreting the predictions made by climate models.

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