Princeton climate scientist Simon Donner has been blogging about Cyclone Gonu and the disturbing way in which the U.S. media seems to care more about oil prices than people killed by the storm. Of course, one might reply that at least our media actually covered this storm. By contrast, it more or less ignored the Madagascan cyclone disasters from earlier this year. No disruption of oil supply involved there, you see. Just destruction of the rice crop, which the people eat, and the vanilla crop, which they rely upon for exports....
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Cyclone Gonu, in the Arabian Sea, was our first Category 5 storm of the year yesterday. Now, as I write this, it is still a very strong storm and is about to set an ominous record. As Margie Keiper puts it over at the Weather Underground:
An unusual event is happening over the next 48 hours, as…
It is important to remember--as I note in my latest Daily Green item--that Cyclone Sidr isn't the first staggering storm in the North Indian Ocean basin this year. Indeed, you could argue that 2007 has been the worst year on record for intense North Indian cyclones; and before Sidr came Cyclone…
A Thought Experiment: Due to a combination of crises - maybe a volcano explosion, the penetration of Ug99 into the main of the world wheat crop, drought in many of the world's grain growing regions, zombie invasion etc... (it doesn't really matter), the Global North experiences a catastrophic…
Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) Top Stories:Nargis, Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production…
Noooo! Not the vanilla!!! Will the price of ice cream go up? ;-)
That's a good point Chris. At least Hurricane Gonu has received some media attention here.
Oddly enough, I was in Madagascar doing field work in January and February, but on the other side of the island (north of Toliara on the SW coast). For perspective, while I was there, heavy rainfall, largely from the passing cyclones, flooded all the rivers draining the central highlands and made travel to the field site treacherous. It took 2.5 days to travel the 150 km from the regional capital of Toliara to the field site in Andavadoaka. And this was on the opposite coast, hundreds and hundreds of kms from where the cyclones made landfall.
Sadly, outside of environmentalists and scientists studying and trying to preserve the diverse rainforest and reefs, and perhaps some folks trading sapphires and diamonds, you're right, few people here pay any attention to Madagascar. I'm not surprised that the cyclones barely broke the international news, at least the english-language news (being a former colony of France, Madagascar gets some coverage in the french press).
Oil prices? Who cares about them when Paris Hilton may or may not be going back to jail?!?! I wish the media would talk about oil prices more.
According to Wikipedia (so a grain of skeptical salt may be in order) the adjective for Madagascar is not Madagascan but Malagasy. If you have any Malagasy readers, they might confirm or deny. I only mention it because you write about the island quite often.
Hi ACW,
Funny, we vetted this very carefully in the proofing/copyeding phase for Storm World.
The upshot is that I'm quite confident in "Madagascan"
Thanks
cm