IT WILL be little consolation to those affected by this year鈥檚 storms and fires, but the natural disasters of 2003 could have been far worse.
It didn鈥檛 seem that way in Australia, though, where the year began with its most serious bush fires in 50 years. Fires ravaged southern California through October, and a historic heatwave claimed thousands of lives in France, started bush fires in Portugal and toppled temperature records from London to Baghdad.
Hurricane Isabel raged in the North Atlantic as a category 5 storm, the worst possible. By the time it hit the US coast on 18 September, it had fallen to category 2 and its winds soon dropped below hurricane force. Even so, coastal islands were badly affected, inland flooding was extensive, and Washington DC shut down for two days.
Advertisement
The human toll was greater, although less widely publicised, when Typhoon Maemi hit South Korea on 12 September, with winds up to a record 214 kilometres per hour: 100 people died and 25,000 were left homeless. Floods killed another 100 people in Indonesia in early November, when they washed a landslide of mud down slopes left barren by logging.
Global warming has taken the blame for some or all of these events, despite studies reported by 快猫短视频 this year which hinted that overall the incidence of severe floods and hurricanes does not appear to be rising. Whatever the overall trend, we are making the consequences of natural disasters worse. People have a penchant for building in dangerous locations, like the low-lying coastal islands devastated by hurricanes or the dry hills around Los Angeles or Canberra, while farming and logging practices contribute to the flood risk.
We should be worried about global warming. But that is no excuse for ignoring the more direct ways in which we are putting ourselves at the mercy of the elements.