Natural hazards/disasters:
I've been meaning to pull together a geobloggers confab at AGU this year but didn't get it done, so we'll have to wait until next year. In the meantime, I'm at the AGU Fall Meeting all week and am giving...
Posted on December 11, 2006 10:29 AM • 6 Comments
I have a post up on Prometheus about a new letter from Lieberman and Collins (RM and Chair of Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs) to DHS head Mike Chertoff on not being ready for the next catastrophe....
Posted on November 21, 2006 3:13 PM • 0 Comments
If we all left this planet tomorrow, how long would it take nature to clean all traces of our presence? Two years? Ten? Ok, maybe a bit longer, but when you see photos like this you realize that in geologic...
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Posted on November 9, 2006 1:52 PM • 9 Comments
In my mid-October haze I missed a major development in a story I cover fairly closely -- FEMA and disaster response. I covered back in September the Collins/Lieberman coup to get new FEMA language passed. What I missed recently (Oct...
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Posted on October 27, 2006 3:25 PM • 0 Comments
Let's put it this way: Anybody even remotely connected to natural hazards studies would identify Gilbert White as The Man of the field. They called White the Father of Natural Hazards. His Ph.D. thesis wrote the book on human interactions...
Posted on October 6, 2006 5:24 PM • 0 Comments
I have a lot of abstracts backlogged right now, so I'm splitting the breakdown into a few different posts. First, the hurricane battles continue: Evidence in support of the climate change-Atlantic hurricane hypothesis by James B. Elsner of Florida State....
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Posted on September 18, 2006 5:22 PM • 0 Comments
I've written a bunch on FEMA and have been following the post-Katrina ping pong ball as it bounces all over our fair capitol city. I haven't exactly been quiet about my opinion that FEMA needs to come out of DHS...
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Posted on September 18, 2006 4:09 PM • 2 Comments
Some of you will already know that Roger Pielke, Jr. and Judy Curry have been having a little back-and-forth over on Prometheus about hurricanes and global warming. The latest tête-à-tête started because of this ridiculous WaPo op-ed. Roger skewered the...
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Posted on August 21, 2006 2:50 PM • 15 Comments
This pretty much sums up what I've been working on for the past six months. (From Dan Wright of the Palm Beach Post -- this appeared last Friday.) Hurricanes are currently the natural hazard of focus, so of course I've...
Posted on August 15, 2006 11:03 AM •
I'd like to say yes. Since DHS updated the National Response Plan as well as designated five teams of coordinators from FEMA and USCG in advance of the hurricane season, I would have said they are being appropriately responsive to...
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Posted on August 14, 2006 4:07 PM • 0 Comments
Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney have an excellent piece on the coverage of hurricanes and global warming here. Matt asked me to comment a few days ago when they posted the piece. Unfortunately, Matt and Chris are so spot-on and...
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Posted on August 9, 2006 1:32 PM • 1 Comments
Another gem I missed while away, and I'll leave it without commentary. The short of it is that NOAA pilots flew a Gulfstream (corporate-style) jet into the meat of a hurricane, where previously they had only been nibbling at the...
Posted on August 3, 2006 1:50 PM • 0 Comments
We often define natural hazard as natural disaster and vice versa even though they are of clearly different character. Natural hazard defines the potential for a destructive confluence between society and nature, whereas natural disaster describes the outcome. There is...
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Posted on June 22, 2006 12:28 PM • 5 Comments
It's not often that geologists get featured on NPR, but when you publish a paper in Nature that discusses the destruction of Los Angeles via fire and brimstone, you're going to be called upon to give interviews. Here's the exchange...
Posted on June 21, 2006 9:36 PM • 3 Comments
When I read this the first two times I thought it came from The Onion, but apparently it's true. ABCnews.com story here and Drudge Report story here:...
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Posted on June 1, 2006 12:14 AM • 23 Comments
Just came across this photo in Andrew Lawson's 1908 report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It's one of those things you seem to come across once a year or so and it's always worth reflecting on. If you've never...
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Posted on May 3, 2006 6:23 PM • 2 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the CSTPR. (More in the about.)
