Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Summer Wine]

2004 - Tsunami
2005 - Hurricane Katrina
2005 - Mud Slides
2005 - Earth Quake

I am curious how much money the World can keep on providing the victims of these one off cataclysmic disasters before they have no more money to give. It really does seem like a bad couple of years compared to the past decade or am I really just more numbed to it all.

I wonder how many more disasters we are able to weather.

[rapier]

[Summer Wine]

The thing that bothers me is when another disaster hits and the response is "Sorry, Sunshine, ain't going to happen". Then what? Call the UN, OOPs! we don't have the money if they don't give it to us.

[Gopher]

This is a pretty bad year.

But news coverage of these things has also become pretty extensive and thorough, esp., say, in the last five years or so. I know from my quick-reference history of Chile, for example, that tidal waves reached out and destroyed Concepcion several times during the colonial era.

We've been plauged by severe natural disasters and ice ages for thousands of years.

Dinosaurs also had, if the dominant theory is correct, a pretty bad spell, too...

So this isn't the easist place in the universe to live in.

[Summer Wine]

Gopher, I agree with you on what you said.

The numbers must have escalated though? Even the cost of rebuilding has gone up, even if the total deaths haven't. How much can they give? I am a person with a set account, someone asks me for help, I give. But I know that there is a limit to my account.

A country has an account, but still there must be a limit. How many more disasters can we handle?

[canuckistan]

[The Bobster]

[EFLtrainer]

Well, one way to look at it is that "average" doesn't really exist. So, any given year is going to most likely be above or below average, right? This is an above average year - particularly going back a calendar year. But is it actually exceptional? I don't know. Probably is. The only thing that's happened that could possibly be truly called exceptional is the situation in New Orleans because one can make an argument for global warming playing a part. The rest? Not much that could have been done to prevent them and all ahve happened before in some form or other. And repeatedly. Why we aren't learning from the past might be the real question to ask...

That said, things probably are getting worse, but not necessarily due to the Earth going crazy. It has to do with the spread of humanity. 7 billion is a lot of people, and they gotta go somewhere. Historically, we go where the water is and to the most strategic locations. Both for obvious reasons. Well, if you're near water, you're gonna get wet. If you're in a strategic location it's likely to be isolated and hard to get to. Hmmm....

So... if we really want to protect ourselves we need to s l o w d o w n development. That is, if we don't want to pay the cost of the disaster, we have to pay the cost of prevention. (Typically the latter is cheaper, but probably not always.) Prevention is not just dikes and early warning, it's also planning where to and not to live; it's spending the money and time to build intelligently for the location; it's perhaps controlling population growth so we have enough pie to give everyone a slice or to allow science to provide the pre-emptive rather than reactionary solutions; it's perhaps making some socio-political changes on a local, national and global scale.

Can we afford it? Most likely. But, then, there are reasons why empires fall, and nature has been the culprit quite often. So, maybe we can't if it keeps up.

[rapier]

Add this to the list:

Flooding chaos across Britain
Wednesday October 12, 11:45 AM

Torrential rain has caused flooding chaos throughout Britain, with emergency services stretched to the limit.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/12102005/344/flooding-chaos-across-britain.html

[R. S. Refugee]

[JeJuJitsu]

[Gopher]

[JeJuJitsu]