It’s too early for accurate estimates of the devastation by the typhoon that hit the Philippines yesterday, but according to early reports, there were 40-foot storm surges. Photos coming in this morning show unbelievable destruction from one of the most powerful storms to ever make landfall.
According to this NYT article, there was one bright spot: The storm moved so quickly that it didn’t deluge the islands with as much rain as a slower-moving storm would have. Also, many people did get out of its path: around 790K according to government estimates.
The storm is due to hit Vietnam tomorrow. Da Nang and Hue, major population centers, are in the projected path, according to the Times article linked above. Save the Children is one of many organizations collecting funds to help the survivors. Please feel free to call out other relief organizations in comments.
Open thread.
Botsplainer
With that kind of surge, you probably have wave action on top of that in the 15-30 foot range.
Damn.
Of course, Al Gore is fat, and lives in a big house.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, since it’s only hitting brown people, obviously this means absolutely nothing about global climate change. Now, if it were snowing in February, that would of course mean that there is no such thing as global warming.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia has the good fortune to be safe from the really big typhoons that come in from the open Pacific. The South China Sea is largely surrounded by land masses, and in the Peninsula we have Sumatra between us and the expanse of the Indian Ocean. I hope everyone in the Philippines and Vietnam stays as safe as they can.
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Every puffy, pasty Texas paper shuffler needs a 6000 square foot McManse, an H3, a Lincoln Navigator for his wife, A GMC Suburban for his mistress and sports cars for his kids. Deprive them of that, and it means that the terrorists have won.
Best part is, there are a shitton of guys barely eking it out in 1100 sq ft crumbling tract homes that have been propagandized into believing exactly the same.
MikeJ
Every time the announcers in the Chelsea – West Brom match mention Shane Long I think they’re saying Chaise Lounge.
Schlemizel
Wife’s cousin moved back to the states this fall, planning of saving up to bring his Filipino family over sometime next year. It was a tense day for him but he got a call about an hour ago & they are all fine. Some scary moments but nothing too bad, they had evacuated.
He, of course, has some guilt about not being there with them – sort of continuing the thread raven & I had previously. Guilt is a funny thing, it has its uses but it also can afflict us when we really don’t deserve it.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
Hanging super typhoon Haiyan on Global Climate Change seems to me to be as counter productive as disputing Global climate Change because it still does snow in February. There has been an average of 4.4 super typhoons per year since 2000. This year there have been five of them. The record was set in 1997 with 12 of them. If super typhoon activity is indicative of Global Warming then we’re fortunate in that it seems to have peaked 16 years ago. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released a massive assessment that found only “low confidence” that intense tropical cyclone activity had increased since 1950. Global Warming poses a terrible threat and there are demonstrable indications of it to be found – just not in Haiyan.
Pogonip
@Amir Khalid: Those poor souls in the Phillippines are really in a bind. If there’s a 500-mile-wide typhoon coming and you are on an island, there are not many places to hide. I am not sure even a basement would help as it might flood.
Botsplainer
My vote is to scale back wasteful development, which was a conservative position up until about midway through the Reagan (spit) years.
The real kick in the ass is that it wouldn’t impact anyone’s standard of living in any real sense.
MikeJ
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set): Blaming global warming for any particular storm is like blaming steroids for one random home run from the steroid era. It may not be possible to tell if that homer was because the batter was juiced, but it’s undeniable there more of them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
One of the things climatologists have been saying for years is that tropical storms will become more intense and more frequent due to rising ocean temperatures.
Directly tying THIS super typhoon to climate change as a definite “well, duh!” may not be productive, but it’s part of a trend. A trend that is being actively and loudly ignored (so to speak) by the denialists, in the classic both hands to ears and saying “la la la I can’t hear you” sense, because it is a change they really can’t blame Obama for, but will anyway, because he’s 1) a Democrat, therefore an usurper, and 2) he’s near.
handsmile
From the Guardian’s report: “[The major island of] Bohol is expecting its next typhoon to hit on Wednesday…”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/09/typhoon-haiyan-death-philippines
I’m beginning to suspect that Haiti is no longer the most God-forsaken nation on earth.
Though with the predominance of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines, Catholic Relief Services may be a good charity to consider. http://crs.org/
BC: With such a grim subject, I have to say the “Open Thread” bar is set pretty high.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer:
If they don’t get all those things, by gosh, that’s the Kenyan Islamoatheist usurper imposing socialism on us all. Next, the bastard will be making sure we have access to health care, the son of a bitch.
dmbeaster
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
Agree with your basic assessment, with one caveat. Super Typhoon Haiyan is now the strongest typhoon, cyclone and/or hurricane to make landfall in recorded history. Global warming does not so much predict more storms as more intense storms. There is, of course, no way to ascribe this one storm to global warming, but it is suggestive since more intense storms is the prediction. A few more “most intense storms in history” over the next decade, and maybe then the proof is clearer.
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
How can you truly be free if you can’t gloat at the misfortune of people for having the audacity to be born black, brown or poor?
Plus, how dare those blacks and browns not genuflect in admiration of the stunning accomplishments and morals of your ancestors, the whip wielders that worked hard at encouraging the physical labor that built the infrastructure and waited on the powers in that most pure flower of Western Civilization, the antebellum South?
Betty Cracker
@handsmile:
Come again?
CDW
How strange that among total devastation there are houses standing intact, not even any visible damage to roofs. And those kayaks? Surely they weren’t there during the storm.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer:
The real problem is no individual can be truly free unless every other individual is subordinated to him.
And if that is not the case, well, he’s being oppressed. (cue Monty Python and the Holy Grail quotation stream).
handsmile
@Betty Cracker:
Absolutely, positively, no offense meant. Simply a feeble (and evidently failed) attempt at a kind of gallows humor. With the reports of Haiyan’s death and destruction as the post’s subject, I wondered whether commenters might choose to refrain from topics of a decidedly less catastrophic nature, i.e., the more typical “Open Thread” fare.
Mea culpa completely.
Betty Cracker
@CDW: I read about some research into that phenomenon after Hurricane Charley back in aught-four. IIRC, they theorize there are smaller weather cells within hurricanes (and other big storms, I suppose) with higher winds. It is odd.
Betty Cracker
@handsmile: No offense taken at all — I just wasn’t sure what you meant. I can be slow on the uptake. ;-)
handsmile
@Betty Cracker:
Rarely that I see. :)
(and I fear I can be too baroque or obscure sometimes in my comments here. concision has never been among my writing companions.)
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not only that, the subordinates must be grateful for whichever crumbs they are allowed to eke out, and should be really quick to forgive injustice.
For example, if the crumbling school that an all white school board allows a 60% black majority district is named Nathan Bedford Forrest Elementary, the black parents of black children are rudely and hurtfully trampling the heritage of that board by petitioning to change the name or insisting that the battle rag of the Confederacy not be flown there. After all, the end of slavery was nearly 160 years ago and they should just get over it while not desecrating the sacred name of the blessed ancestors of white folks.
Elizabelle
Betty Cracker bait:
Nicholas Kristoff column today, by guest writer Ellen Chase.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
I blame the Tea Party.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Cool article — thanks! Chickens are very entertaining, in a “Mean Girls” kind of way.