And I'm still stuck in it:
"Nation lacks system to track landslide hazards" by Phuong Le | Associated Press April 01, 2014
SEATTLE — Building a nationwide mudslide warning system is now possible with new technology, experts say, but would require spending tens of millions of dollars annually and could take more than a decade to complete....
‘‘No one has pushed it, and it hasn’t been a priority,’’ said Scott Burns, a geology professor at Portland State University. ‘‘It’s costly to monitor it, and we don’t want to pay for it.’’
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Despite this, landslides have exacted a toll in all 50 states, causing 25 to 50 deaths a year and up to $2 billion in losses annually....
The lack of attention on landslides comes as experts say increasing numbers of people are moving farther from cities and suburbs, or onto previously uninhabited slopes, and are more likely to come face to face with nature’s destructive forces.
Nothing about neglected infrastructure, but that's par for the course now.
It's always your fault, citizen. Now pay up so more money can be wasted on the wealthy and well-connected.
Development on vulnerable land can disturb soil, put too much weight on slopes, or increase soil moisture, whether from runoff or a prolific sprinkler system....
Unreal! First, I don't have one and the yard shows it if dry; however, that's the province of elite wealth, too.
Related:
"A group of farmers and business owners sued the US Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday, saying the agency’s decisions since 2006 have contributed to major flooding in five states, mostly farmland in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. Outside experts who reviewed the 2011 flooding said the Corps did the best it could in dealing with record amounts of water that flowed into the 2,341-mile-long river after unusually heavy spring rains in Montana and North Dakota."
Just another example of the government "helping," but the floods were also caused by record snow melt from record snowfall.
And keep the WHERE in mind for later!
The March 22 slide that killed at least 24 in Oso, about 55 miles northeast of Seattle, in what could be one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history.
Weary of landslides threatening homes, power lines, and underground pipes, some states are not waiting for disasters to hit. Oregon, North Carolina, Kentucky, and others have used high-tech lasers mounted on aircraft to begin to assess landslide risk and build maps that could be used by planners and homeowners.
In other words, this is just another excuse to build the global surveillance grid and inventory the entire planet -- all in the name of good, of course.
The airborne laser, known as LIDAR, fires rapid laser pulses at a surface and a sensor on the instrument measures the amount of time it takes for each pulse to bounce back, building a detailed elevation map, point by point.
These mapping efforts are turning up previously overlooked dangers: More homes and businesses than previously thought are on hillsides, coastal bluffs, and mountain areas that could give way at any time.
While a national LIDAR mapping effort is planned for 2015, USGS scientists have worked in regions such as Washington’s Puget Sound to pinpoint landslide hazards. In Seattle, they developed a forecasting tool that acts as an early warning system to let city officials know when intense rainfall could cause rain-soaked hillsides to buckle.
Little too late now, isn't it?
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Speaking of late:
"No homes fully rebuilt under N.Y. hurricane program | Associated Press April 01, 2014
NEW YORK — New York City politicians and victims of Hurricane Sandy on Monday criticized a city-run program that is supposed to rebuild homes destroyed by the storm.
Officials acknowledged at a City Council hearing that construction has begun on only three homes, and none has been completely rebuilt.
A year and a half after the storm, checks have been mailed to just three homeowners, totaling $100,000. And those checks were only sent out last week.
So where did the money go (although I guess we know where the homeless are coming from; maybe he can explain that at Harvard)?
Officials said the city needs another $1 billion in federal funding to serve the thousands of New Yorkers who have applied for help from the Build-It-Back program. The city said it is waiting for the final installment of a federal Housing and Urban Development block grant.
Several Sandy victims testified that they believe the program has failed them. Many are still living in temporarily rented apartments, or with friends and relatives. And thousands who applied for help have yet to see a payout.
Mayor Bill de Blasio named a new team Saturday to speed up efforts to help New Yorkers still recovering from the hurricane, saying he was ‘‘thoroughly dissatisfied’’ with previous results.
De Blasio joined Senator Charles Schumer to announce his new plan at a news conference in the Rockaways, a Queens neighborhood that was among the hardest hit in the 2012 storm.
Who was the mayor before Bill got there?
What a mess he left.
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It continued to rain here, although thankfully the sun is out today.
Heard from my friends last night that April is expected to be below normal as far as temperatures go, and I just sighed. Doesn't feel like spring yet; ground was still mostly frozen at 6 this morning and at 8:30 it's only 34 degrees here according to the thermometer.
"UN panel says warming worsens food, hunger problems" by Seth Borenstein | Associated Press April 01, 2014
Were his rewrites a joke?
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Global warming will make feeding the world harder and more expensive, a United Nations scientific panel said Monday.
This is the excuse they come up with for the destruction of the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico as food sources along with the land mismanagement and chemical pollution of air, land, and soil.
I'm sure the elites and the political class will steal eat good buffets.
A warmer world will push food prices higher, trigger ‘‘hotspots of hunger’’ among the world’s poorest people, and put the crunch on Western delights like fine wine and robust coffee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a 32-volume report.
I drink rot gut coffee and don't drink wine.
So yesterday global warming was responsible for wars, not lying leaders and mouthpiece media. Today it is responsible for hunger, not mismanagement of resources and corporate governance).
And you wonder why I'm not laughing?
‘‘We’re facing the specter of reduced yields in some of the key crops that feed humanity,’’ panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri said during a press conference at which the report was released.
You do know GMO crops result in reduced yields, right?
The findings on food production are one segment of the UN report made public Sunday. It found that if the world does not cut pollution of heat-trapping gases, the already noticeable harms of global warming could spin out of control.
They are so hysterical about it you can't believe them.
Screaming while they are freezing and they can't smell their hair on fire.
More than 100 governments unanimously approved the study, in which US scientists took a leading role.
All the MORE REASON to DOUBT IT!
The White House said it is taking the new report as a call to action. Secretary of State John Kerry said ‘‘the costs of inaction are catastrophic.’’
Globe didn't tell his most recent joke?
That's from the same guy jetting around the planet and causing traffic tie-ups regarding Ukraine, Syria, and Israel?
Oh, the distinct smell of hypocrisy most stinky!
Although heat and carbon dioxide are often considered good for plants, manmade warming will reduce food production compared to a world without global warming, the report said.
How can they even know that other than their "computer models" that have been consistently wrong?
The last time the panel reported on the effects of warming in 2007, it said it was too early to tell whether climate change would increase or decrease food production, and many skeptics talked of a greening world.
After the record cold winters and freezing spring and summers, the verdict is in regarding these $cienti$ts.!
But in the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in showing that climate change hurts food production, said Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science and lead author of the climate report.
I no longer have a taste for this s***.
But this does not mean in 50 years there will be less food grown.
What?
Thanks to the ‘‘green revolution’’ of improved agricultural techniques, crop production is growing about 10 percent per decade and climate change is expected to reduce yields by 1 percent a decade, so crop production will still go up, but not as fast, said David Lobell of Stanford University, one of the authors of the report’s chapter on food problems.
Related:
USDA forecasts drop in farm profits
Farm numbers decline, but revenue rises
What is rarely if ever discussed.
Sorry for flapping about it.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Dairy farmers enjoy price boom
You can toa$t it with a glass of more expensive milk, America!
Still, it is as if an anchor is weighing down the improvements to agriculture, Pachauri and Field said. Some places have seen crop-yield increases drop from 2 percent a year to 1 percent or even plateau. And in places like India, where 800 million people rely on rainfall, not irrigation, the green revolution never improved crops much, Pachauri said.
Although changes in rainfall hurt, mostly the problem will be too much heat, Lobell said. ‘‘No place is immune,’’ he said.
Where is the heat because it is not here yet!
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Sorry I'm no longer hungry to inhale such noxious gas, readers.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Landslide death toll hits 27, with 22 missing; Crews make improvements on search technique" by Timothy Williams | New York Times April 02, 2014
Searchers continued to recover remains Tuesday amid the debris caused by the landslide that swept down a mountainside more than a week ago in western Washington, officials said, as the death toll rose to 27, with 22 other people still missing....
That's more my concern rather than some fart-mi$ting fool.
After several days of near-constant rain in the area, searchers have been buoyed by improved weather, Steve Harris, a supervisor in the search effort, said. The heavy rains caused additional flooding and made the thick mud even softer, creating difficult and dangerous conditions.
I can't take this dirty spin anymore, folks, and the paper is full of it.
With the water receding, rescue workers have been able to extend their search. In addition, he said, rescue workers have taken advantage of tools that have been brought in, including sonar to search the water, and excavation equipment that has been placed on pontoons.
But he cautioned that “there’s a lot of material out there that very likely won’t be recovered.”
Tell the newspaper to stop raising my hopes only to dash them. They do it a lot!
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