World Pt 2 Essay, Research Paper
by some other hazard, such as an earthquake or deluge, and
the resulting damage and loss of life is therefore subsumed
within the tally of the primary event. Nevertheless, landslides
can be highly destructive, both in isolation and in numbers.
In 1556, a huge earthquake struck the Chinese province of
Shensi, shaking the ground so vigorously that the roofs of
countless cave dwellings collapsed, incarcerating (according
to Imperial records) over 800,000 people. In 1970, another
quake caused the entire peak of the Nevados Huascaran
wiping out 18,000 people in just four minutes and erasing all
rainfall too can be particularly effective at triggering landslides, and when in 1998 Hurricane Mitch dumped over 30
centimetres of rain on Central America, it mobilized over
a million landslides in Honduras alone, blocking roads,
burying farmland, and destroying communities. The final – and perhaps greatest – threat to life and limb
comes not from within the Earth but from without. Although
the near constant bombardment of our planet by large
chunks of space debris ended billennia ago, the threat from
asteroids and comets remains real and is treated increasingly
seriously. Even as I write, the UK government has announced
funding for a new research centre dedicated to the study of
suggest that around a thousand asteroids with diameters of
1 kilometre or more have orbits around the Sun that cross
the Earth’s, making collision possible at some point in the
future: 1 kilometre is the impactor diameter threshold for
initiating a cosmic winter, due to dust lifted into the stratosphere blocking out solar radiation, for wiping out a quarter
or so of the human population, and for causing general
mayhem worldwide. The revival of interest in the impact
during the last decade: first, the identification of a large
impact crater at Chicxulub, off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula,
which has now been established as the ’smoking gun’
responsible, ultimately, for global genocide at the end of
the Cretaceous period: second, the eye-opening collisions
scars larger than our own planet were disconcerting to say
the least and begged the question in many quarters – what if
threat from nature then I hope, by now, to have
engendered a healthy respect for the destructive potential
Earth have to face almost on a daily basis. The reinsurance
company Munich Re., who, for obvious reasons, have a considerable interest in this sort of thing, estimate that up to 15
million people were killed by natural hazards in the last
millennium, and over 3. 5 million in the last century alone.
At the end of the second millennium AD, the cost to the
global economy reached unprecedented levels, and in 1999
storms and floods in Europe, India, and South East Asia,
toll of 75,000 and economic losses totalling 100 billion
US$. The last three decades of the twentieth century each saw a
diminished as a consequence of improvements in forecasting
and hazard mitigation, and the outcome of the battle against
nature’s dark side remains far from a foregone conclusion.
While we now know far more about natural hazards, the
been at least partly negated by the increased vulnerability of
large sections of the Earth’s population. This has arisen primarily as a result of the rapid rise in the size of the world’s
population, which doubled between 1960 and 2000. The
bulk of this rise has occurred in poor developing countries,
many of which are particularly susceptible to a whole spectrum of natural hazards. Furthermore, the struggle for
hillsides, flood plains, and coastal zones, has become increasingly utilized for farming and habitation. Such terrains are
surges, and tsunamis. Another major factor in raising vulnerability in recent
hazard-prone regions of the developing world. Within just a
few years, and for the first time ever, more people will live in
urban environments than in the countryside, many crammed
into poorly sited and badly constructed megacities with populations in excess of 8 million people. Forty years ago New
York and London topped the league table of cities, with
however, cities such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay, India),
Dhaka (Bangladesh), Karachi (Pakistan), and Mexico City
will be firmly ensconced in the top ten: gigantic
sprawling agglomerations of humanity with populations
approaching or exceeding 20 million, and extremely vulnerable to storm, flood, and quake. A staggering 96 per cent of
if it might well deteriorate even further. With so many people
shoehorned into ramshackle and dangerously exposed cities
it can only be a matter of time before we see the first of a
series of true mega disasters, with death tolls exceeding one
million. The picture I have painted is certainly bleak, but the
reality may be even worse. Future rises in population and
vulnerability will take place against a background of dramatic climate change, the like of which the planet has not
experienced for maybe 10,000 years. The jury remains out
on the precise hazard implications of the rapid warming
expected over the next hundred years, but rises in sea
level that may exceed 80 centimetres are forecast in the
most recent (2001) report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change). This will certainly increase
the incidence and impact of storm surges and tsunamis
and – in places – raise the level of coastal erosion. Other
consequences of a temperature rise that could reach 6
degrees Celsius by the end of the century may include
more extreme meteorological events such as hurricanes,
tornadoes, and floods, greater numbers of landslides in
mountainous terrain, and, eventually, even more volcanic
eruptions. So is the world as we know it about to end and, if so, how?
A century from now will we be gasping for water in an
winter?
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