Overflowing rivers swollen by persistent rains. Over a million acres scorched by wildfires. Mighty blizzards blanketing the Northeast. One hundred ninety-nine tornadoes in a single day. The weather outside was not just frightful, but also costly. Although the number of extreme weather events have been increasing all over the world in the past few years, in 2011 the U.S. set a record in weather-related damagewith 12 catastrophes that cost at least $1 billion each. The damage from the May 22 tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., alone could top $3 billion.
Extreme weather events have hit other nations hard as well, including Pakistan, the Philippines and Australia, which have all seen heavy flooding. All the events have convinced many experts that with climate change, the weather will, unfortunately, only get worse.—Rose Eveleth
See our In-Depth Report, "Extreme Weather and Climate Change"
Technology Fuels the Arab Spring
In the last year new technologies didn't just make our lives easier—they completely changed the political structure of the Middle East. Twitter had a hand in bringing down a several dictatorships this year as protestors in the Middle East communicated and organized with one another via social media.
The Arab Spring began in December 2010 after the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, who was protesting high unemployment rates in Tunisia. News and images of his protest began moving quickly. Protests in Tunisia ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, and by February resistance brought down the 30-year regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, forcing him to resign. In August, after months of protests that erupted into a civil war, Libya's dictator since 1969, Muammar Gaddafi, was hunted down by opposition forces and killed.
To see if Twitter played a role in regime change, researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle analyzed millions of tweets, looking for words like "revolution," "liberty," and "Ben Ali." The occurrence of those words spiked as the revolutions got underway. They also saw that the activity from Egypt on Twitter in the days before Mubarak resigned increased 100-fold. The study concludes that the service played a key role in toppling dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, although other experts debate just how much social media tools drove the revolutions.—Rose Eveleth
The Japan Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis
On March 11, a catastrophic earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan—and destroyed a nuclear power complex. In the days and weeks that followed, the Fukushima Daiichi facility went on to experience three meltdowns and, because of a buildup of hydrogen gas, multiple explosions.
After months of heroic efforts workers have officially succeeded in achieving "cold shutdown"—that is, keeping the temperatures in the damaged reactors below 100 degrees Celsius so that the water used to cool the reactors does not just quickly boil away. Such a shutdown state makes it simpler to keep the melted nuclear fuel from undergoing further fission. Unfortunately, leaks in the reactor containment vessels means that water must continue to be added to keep the reactors chilled.
Regardless, much damage has been done. Roughly 88,000 people have been evacuated from an area of 20 kilometers surrounding the power plant, many never to return. Most recently, the utility that owns the plant spilled 45,000 liters of radioactive cooling water, and radioactive elements spewed by the power plant have been found over an area of some 30,000 square kilometers. The multiple meltdownsslowed the pace of new nuclear power plant construction globally—potentially setting back efforts to combat climate change—as well as created the world's newest nuclear park, otherwise known as an "exclusion zone."—David Biello
See our In-Depth Report, "The Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis"
FULL ARTICLE:
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment