…and this is a 
Cyclone Sidr … have you heard about it?
Category: Environment
Posted on: November 14, 2007 6:50 PM, by PZ Myers
Try checking the major American news sites: CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the New York Times, you can even try the BBC. There's a major news story missing.
You'll have to read Chris Mooney's blog to find it. There's a potential Category 5 cyclone, Cyclone Sidr, on its way to smash Bangladesh.
It's going to hit sometime tomorrow. While Sonny Perdue prays for a little rain, maybe we should be urging our news networks to pay attention to the important news, our government should be getting ready for emergency assistance, and we should all be preparing to loosen those checkbooks and possibly offer what aid we can.
Environment
Comments
Actually, it does surprise me that this isn't on the BBC South Asia website yet.
Posted by: Christianjb | November 14, 2007 6:56 PM
Well gee.
It doesn't affect America physically or economically, so who gives a crap?
I've only in recent years realized how frivolous and dumbed-down our news media has become. When the military overthrew the government in Thailand earlier this year (What? There was a military coup in Thailand?!), it didn't even get mentioned on the news (and I live in the Blue, Blue bay area!). The biggest story on the news that day was some yokel in Napa county who thought he'd found a rock that had the face of Jesus in it.
I'm really considering cancelling my subscription to Time because they'd rather prat on about how Hillary prays than . On an only slightly related note, I've noticed that the cover of time follows this pattern: "The Education System in America Sux: Why We Are Behind", "Shallow health article XVIII", "Faith in America (And by Faith, we Mean Christianity)", loop.
Posted by: scrabcake | November 14, 2007 7:02 PM
So thats where all that praying is going to, its bound up in a hurricane! We scientists need to band together to create a weapon to stun God.
Posted by: The Stone | November 14, 2007 7:11 PM
At least Weather Underground has some coverage.
Posted by: Randall | November 14, 2007 7:16 PM
Scrabcake-I noticed the same thing in the seventh grade, 23 years ago. There was a one day a week "current events" section in my civics class. We used Time, national & local newspapers and a few other magazines to examine national events and discuss them, and Time gets pretty predictable. Just a little right of the middle of the road, and always trying to pretend that it's just a little to the left.
Items like this are the reasons why I either laugh or cringe(depends on mood) when I hear the phrase "liberal media." Wouldn't a "liberal" media already be asking for government help?
Posted by: Neil | November 14, 2007 7:20 PM
Wikipedia says the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone of similar size, unofficially known as Cyclone Gorky, may have killed 138,000 people and left 10 million homeless.
Posted by: John Pieret | November 14, 2007 7:41 PM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/14112007news.shtml
What the hell do you mean that the BBC doesn't have it?
Posted by: Bobryuu | November 14, 2007 7:45 PM
The first cyclone of the season in Australia has been named Guba. It's a piddling category 1 storm but the name seems worth a mention. Bloody weird name.
Anyway, Bangladesh seems to cop it from all sides. Regular floods in monsoon season as it's basically a river delta. Tsunamis from those nasty tectonic plates. Cyclones, diseases. You'd think the people would just shift to somewhere habitable ...../end stupidity.
Posted by: Brian English | November 14, 2007 7:45 PM
Holy shit. This is looking like it could be very very bad. Thanks for the 'head's up'... any suggestions how we may prompt an appropriate preparation/response?
Posted by: travc | November 14, 2007 7:48 PM
There must be a lot of gays in Bangladesh to attract a hurricane like that.
Hope it doesn't turn out as horribly as it looks like it will.
Posted by: Lycosid | November 14, 2007 7:50 PM
Maybe Canadians are more worldly? It's a top story on the CBC.
Posted by: Brad | November 14, 2007 7:56 PM
It was on the TV news here in Australia.
It was said that Guba is a word from New Guinea.
Posted by: John Morales | November 14, 2007 8:01 PM
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings.jsp
Posted by: John Morales | November 14, 2007 8:08 PM
It was even news on our little CTV station's local morning program in Nova Scotia today, and CBC is covering it.
Posted by: Bee | November 14, 2007 8:22 PM
Bangladesh does get hit hard. Surface water is full of nasty microbes so wells are dug to give people clean water. Turns out the well water is full of arsenic (it occurs naturally in the ground there).
Note the 1970 cyclone killed perhaps 500,000 people which is more than the Indonesian tsunami of a couple of years back or the 1991 cyclone. Since then the country has been building cyclone shelters in hopes of decreasing loss of life (hence the relatively lower loss of life in 1991).
It has the problem of being poor and densely populated (over 2700 people/square mile, the most densely populated US State, NJ, is only 1134 people/square mile).
Reuters AlertNet has the cyclone as the number 3 story (after Somalia and the Chilean earthquake).
Posted by: Erp | November 14, 2007 8:36 PM
Now comes the L.L. Bean parkas! Christians beware.
Posted by: danley | November 14, 2007 8:40 PM
It's difficult for the US media to make room for trivial events with major breaking stories on the latest OJ trial or Paris Hilton hoax. This would break into the headlines if there was a swimsuit model that was caught in a natural disaster
Posted by: Disgusted in St. Louis | November 14, 2007 8:48 PM
Re #8,
Is this your attempt at being facetious?
"You'd think the people would just shift to somewhere habitable ...../end stupidity."
Or are you really so naive that you think these people actually have the means to do so.
Posted by: Fernando Magyar | November 14, 2007 8:57 PM
Somewhat on/off topic:
http://cectic.com/073.html
http://eddirt.frozenreality.co.uk/index.php?id=408
Posted by: khan | November 14, 2007 9:08 PM
Yeah, that's going to make Katrina look like a day in the park.
Posted by: Jonathan | November 14, 2007 9:24 PM
"There must be a lot of gays in Bangladesh to attract a hurricane like that." (#10)
You could say that. Or you could say, God thinks Calcutta's suffering is looking a little tarnished, and wants to pretty it up with some wide-scale carnage so he can love his suffering poor all the more.
Sometimes I wish there were a God to pray to make this sort of thing stop. Too bad that doesn't make it so...
Posted by: ssjessiechan | November 14, 2007 9:30 PM
I'm praying that something similar in magnitude to what happened in 1991 doesn't occur again; or something worse, for that matter.
Posted by: Akshay | November 14, 2007 9:34 PM
So, um, I hope this doesn't mean I'll have trouble getting tech support when I can't figure out how to download that song "Chewing Gum" by Annie that I've had going on in my head over and over and over since I heard it last night. Man, I hate it when I have to wait more than 2 minutes on hold! That's the worst!
Posted by: Charles Soto | November 14, 2007 9:46 PM
Or are you really so naive that you think these people actually have the means to do so.
Are you really so naive as to not detect a humorous comment?
Posted by: Brian English | November 14, 2007 9:48 PM
Especially if a comment has "/end stupidity" to designate it was humour. Sigh.
Posted by: Brian English | November 14, 2007 9:49 PM
I remember the 1970 event. Huge coverage for weeks afterwards, estimated 2 million deaths due to the event itself and the follow-on diseases/loss of infrastructure. Only good thing about that was that it resulted in the "Concert for Bangladesh" - one of the most underrated live albums of the 1970s. People who lived the era know that that means an awful lot.
Sir George Harrison was a great man. My 2c.
(Also remembers when Bangladesh used to be called East Pakistan - and when Sri Lanka was Ceylon) :)
Posted by: jeffox backtrollin' | November 14, 2007 9:51 PM
CNN had a tiny story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/14/bangladesh.cyclone.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch I had to do a search on cyclone -- I'd have thought they'd use Sidr.
Still, pathetic coverage. The US media is ethnocentric and obsessed with trivia.
If O.J. fled to Bangladesh there would be coverage, right?
Posted by: Peter M. | November 14, 2007 10:06 PM
Re #24,
Twas a long day! My apologies.
Posted by: Fernando Magyar | November 14, 2007 10:18 PM
There's an easy way to make Americans care - tell them the source of their supply of Nikes is threatened.
Posted by: craig | November 14, 2007 10:22 PM
I look forward to seeing how little aid Bush will pledge. It's only brown people without oil, after all. I'm betting $20 million or so, offered six days after Sidr hits.
An aide will also need to explain this has nothing to do with apples.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 14, 2007 10:24 PM
This comes as a surprise that American news outlets haven't mentioned it? Don't you know the True American motto? "We've got our own, so the hell with you."
Posted by: Shanwn Wilkinson | November 14, 2007 10:53 PM
Jezus H. Christ on a crutch. What does the great invisable dictator have against the Bangladeshi? I'm beginning to think this god guy is a real prick.
Posted by: Bert Chadick | November 14, 2007 11:18 PM
"What the hell do you mean that the BBC doesn't have it?"
It's stuffed on a weather page, not on the main site.
Ironic, actually, since they've been talking a lot about climate change, and while this storm can't be pinned directly on climate change, the fate of Bangladesh is often something that comes up in such discussions.
Posted by: Jon H | November 14, 2007 11:43 PM
The Chilean earthquake is the headline news at CNN.com right now. The cyclone is near the top of world news, and also is top news in the international edition. I don't think this shows a total disregard for the rest of the planet.
Posted by: Suze | November 14, 2007 11:43 PM
Actually, it's worse than what I mention above.
The BBC World Service has a reporter (and a producer, etc, no doubt) on a special boat IN BANGLADESH right now. On the boat there are a bunch of journalists from various countries, all doing climate-change-related reports.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/bangladeshboat/
The latest dispatch from the BBC reporter is from 11 hours ago, "The weather is beautifully placid, but we're relaibly informed that a big cyclone is heading towards Bangladesh"
They have people on the water there AND THAT'S ALL THEY GOT.
Remarkable.
At least the BBC Weather site says the storm is expected to weaken as it approaches land. Hopefully that'll actually happen.
Hey, let's go for a twofer - let's pray for the storm to avoid Bangladesh, take a right turn, and save itself up until it gets exactly over the homes of the Burmese Junta.
Posted by: Jon H | November 14, 2007 11:52 PM
FYI, Bangladesh has approximately half the population of the United States, crammed into territory approximately the size of Florida.
Posted by: Jon H | November 14, 2007 11:56 PM
Meh, My heart only bleeds on Local and National Issues. I have a hard time caring about a storm in a place I never want to visit.
Posted by: Anonomouse | November 15, 2007 12:46 AM
It's on the front page of the BBC, and was also on the headlines on the World Service about an hour ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7095763.stm
I guess it's a question of timing, over when something like this becomes newsworthy. Oh, and if you convert your time into GMT, you may find another reason why they weren't so quick to change its status. :-)
Posted by: Bob O'H | November 15, 2007 1:00 AM
It was certainly covered by CNN here in Germany, but then again, CNN Europe != CNN America. The international news coverage is reasonably good (daily coverage of civil unrest in the Caucusus; long, in-depth pieces on the geopolitics of Pakistan's Swat valley, the role of China in the rising economy of Angola, etc.), but I think part of it is that it has to compete with European networks that take this stuff seriously. Wolf Blitzer, Paula Zahn, and the rest of the insufferable talking heads are nearly nowhere to be found. Likewise, the he-said-she-said left/right format is downplayed as well.
Posted by: j.t.delaney | November 15, 2007 1:00 AM
I second Bob O'H's point about time zones. The UK has a large Bangladeshi population so it would always cover something like this when it needed covering, they pay their license fee too. I don't listen to BBC Asia on digital radio either, it might have been on there for a day.
As for why do so many people live there? it's a river delta (or is that several rivers' deltas?), which means it is so incredibly fertile people have a hard time NOT living there. It is the region's rice basket for one thing. At least they haven't had the Corps of Engineers stuffing about with the system...
Posted by: Peter Ashby | November 15, 2007 3:42 AM
I just checked the NZ papers, and zip, zilch, nothing. The top story is about rugby and the All Blacks coach.
I am deeply ashamed.
Posted by: Buffybot | November 15, 2007 4:24 AM
Shanwn Wilkinson "Don't you know the True American motto? "We've got our own, so the hell with you."
Just like Americans - private, NGOs, and government - contributed nothing to disaster relief in Bam, Iran '03, Indonesia '04, and Pakistan '05. Or AIDS funding to Africa. Except they did. So go ahead and dismiss it all as geopolitical expedience, or mere PR, or crumbs from the king's table and still feel righteously indignant.
Posted by: Colugo | November 15, 2007 4:45 AM
Buffybot you are right on the paper front, but for once tvnz saves the day:
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1320238/1448810
Posted by: Peter Ashby | November 15, 2007 5:04 AM
Surprisingly, the Bangladesh cyclone warning story is not among the leads on
Al Jazeera (English) web and satellite feeds.
Posted by: MacT | November 15, 2007 5:21 AM
Surprisingly, the Bangladesh cyclone warning story is not among the leads on
Al Jazeera (English) web and satellite feeds.
It's probably in the business pages. "Cyclone Threatens Breeding Grounds Of Underpaid Indentured Guest Workers".
Posted by: ajay | November 15, 2007 5:49 AM
It's not exactly front page news on the BBC online, relegated to the second South-Asia story after Musharraf at the moment. I don't see it on the Guardian website.
Posted by: AE | November 15, 2007 7:52 AM
Good image here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=14622&src=map
Posted by: 6EQUJ5 | November 15, 2007 8:05 AM
Um AE it is on the Beeb's frontpage at news.bbc.co.uk, it is in the text links on the right. Has been since I first checked this thread. Around 09:30 GMT.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | November 15, 2007 8:43 AM
For a literally global early warning of events like this, there are desktop displays of the planet, showing the day/night progression and dynamically updated from meteorological and geologic data feeds. Pretty and useful, though they do require broadband. And you have to expose your desktop now and then to see it.
For Mac there's the free OSXplanet, which is good on weather such as this cyclone (and several others extant). It includes clouds but doesn't currently do its earthquakes (e.g. it missed yesterday's Chilean event altogether). This shoestring project by a first-year college student is derived from xplanet for xwindows, and there are probably windows versions also.
Posted by: thwaite | November 15, 2007 11:46 AM
At least they haven't had the Corps of Engineers stuffing about with the system...
Not sure whether that is meant as criticism of the Corps or the stuffing about.
But, thank the disembodied telic designer of your choice that they do have their version of the corps stuffing about with the system. Bangladeshi flood control engineering has grown into such a large and experienced industry that Bangladeshi firms are now being hired from central to southeast Asia to do engineering and construction of flood control systems. This size and experience has come from the construction of one of the world's most massive array of shelters protected by a network of dikes to protect the shelter areas. They have college engineering programs dedicated exclusively to water engineering. Their government has organizational branches dedicated exclusively to water management. Their system has been most thoroughly and effectively stuffed.
Posted by: Sean | November 15, 2007 2:19 PM
When we lived in Okinawa several years ago, I got in the habit of checking with the Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center for anything in the Pacific or Southern Hemisphere. (Basically anywhere that wasn't threatening the U.S.)
Here's their link:
https://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc.php
And yes, they're covering Sidr, as well as Lee and Guba in the Southern Hemisphere.
Posted by: Katrina | November 15, 2007 2:51 PM
MSNBC covered it in their one PM segment today (Thursday). Which only proves the point. This country (the US that is) is so self centered that the rest of the world might as well be on Neptune. It's why we wind up with presidents as ignorant and uninformed as Bush. I lived in Buffalo NY for 13 years and my wife and I often visited Canada for theatre, museums, shopping in Toronto and the like. But when we traveled 50 miles to the south of the border, most folks looked at Canadians like some kind of foreign freak. This country's chauvinism, isolationism, and navel gazing will be our undoing eventually. And that's part of the reason the nation had such a hissy fit over 9/11 (led by the hissy in chief) when a coldly rational response would have been much more productive (and would have kept us out of Iraq).
Posted by: Keanus | November 15, 2007 5:25 PM