Haiyan; Destruction so far....

Source 

A comprehensive summary of the social disorder that arose from the Typhoon. A statement released by Margareta Wahlström warned that a repeat of such a massive scale disaster could be repeated around other coastal areas especially that of Asia. She also warned of the influences of mankind both in terms of climate change and a better risk management system that includes better governance ( eg urban planning, building codes, education etc). 

I believe the future in risk management is uncertain given the size of uncertainties that lies within predicting future climate changes. Also, whether governments in coastal areas can effectively tackle poverty which influences the factors that underlies an individual's social vulnerability.

Haiyan; Social vulnerability

Last week, I have shown that Typhoon with greater intensities will become more common. I will continue to talk about Haiyan, but with focus on the social aspect of the disaster. David Alexander (2006 p2) wrote “vulnerability is a greater determinant of disaster than hazards themselves”. I will explore how social vulnerability coupled with a strong Typhoon created this disaster.

Figure 1: The construct for the vulnerability of places (Source Cutter 1996)

The above diagram by Cutter explained how the vulnerability of places is measured. Starting from the left;

1. Risk interacts with Mitigation; risk being the probability of a hazard event (in this case a typhoon)
2. These two combines to produce the Hazard Potential
3. The Hazard Potential is either moderated or enhanced by a geographic filter (the site, situation of place and proximity), and a social filter
4. Social filter includes community experience with hazards, community ability to respond to/cope with/recover from/adapt to hazard which in turn is influenced by economic, demographic and housing characteristics.

Cutter has given a comprehensive list of  factors that would increase or decrease social vulnerability. I will explore some of these factors in relation to affected areas.

Figure 2: A population map of the Philippines (Source: OCHA 2013)

Population growth/Housing: 

• The path of the storm went very close to areas near of high population of. For example, the storm came very close to Tacloban and Cebu which have a population of over half a million people. This aerial footage shows most of the destroyed houses are made out of weak materials like wood and metal sheets, which made them very easily damaged.
• For example, both Tacloban and Cebu have a population growth rate of 2.16% and 1.94% respectively between 2000-2010. Coupled with poor housing and inadequate infrastructure, this exemplified the level of social vulnerability. 

Politics: 

• A blog post from the Monkey Cage with guest post from University of Michigan political scientist James Atkinson, Allen Hicken and Nico Ravanilla showed an interesting map (fig 3.) and they connected political incompetence with increased social vulnerability. 
• The misalignment between the location of storm exposure and reconstruction fund suggest that during Typhoon Haiyan some people were made more vulnerable due to their inability to rebuild from previous hazard events. This could contributed to an increase in vulnerability.

Figure 3: Storm exposure (left), reconstruction funds (right) by municipality in the Philippines (source)

Poverty: 

• This is one of the major factors that contribute to the social vulnerability of an area. Income is important as it increases the ability to absorb losses and increases family/person resilience to hazard impact. Comparing fig 4 to fig 2, we could see that the pathways of Typhoon directly passes through provinces that has at least 40% of its population living under the poverty line.

Fig 4: A map showing the percentage of population living below the poverty line in each province (source: WB 2013)

Not all doom and gloom

The Philippine government is working with UNISDR to deliver a programme called “SafeSchool campaign”. This is to reduce social vulnerability by targeting 48,000 public schools across the country to raise “public awareness, disaster preparedness and school education on disaster risk reduction”

A recent research done by Striessnig et al (2013) has shown that the single most important factor in reducing vulnerability to natural hazard is education and in particular female education. Surprisingly, the model also found no significance between reducing vulnerability and income if education is taken in account at the same time.  Therefore this might be the most efficient way to deal with social vulnerability. 

I have outlined some of the factors that exemplified the disaster. Even though the Philippines have multiple experiences of Typhoon, they were unprepared due to the inherent problem that exist within the country. Since social vulnerability is made up of multiple factors (the social vulnerability concepts and metrics table in cutter 1996) and by tackling one factor like education is simply not enough. Ultimately, if both the local and national government cannot run effectively and provide effective post-disaster response, reconstruction and mitigation project, social disorder is doomed to reoccur as seen from previous events in the Philippines.   

“Typhoon Haiyan; Worse than hell”

Last week a Filipino diplomat gave a passionate speech in Warsaw during the climate change conference. He linked the disaster to man-made climate change and "urged the world to wake up". 

The economist (2013) called it “one of the strongest storms ever recorded” and commented that the Filipino government are insisting that man-made climate change is heightening the risk of typhoon.  Also, David Cameron had acknowledged the fact that climate change may have influenced the ‘increasing’ number of extreme weather (Guardian 2013). I want to explore the above statements and question whether disaster like Haiyan would become more common, and with it social disorder.

Fig 1: Projected surface temperature changes for early and late 21^st century relative to the period 1980-1999 (source; IPCC fourth assessment report: Climate change2007) 

figure 2 source  Race et al (2010) 

Figure 3a and 3b source Webster et al(2005) 

The association between climate change and increase in hurricane activity is complex in nature. It is well known that SST (Sea Surface Temperature) >26 degree is required for the formation of tropic cyclones. The IPCC 2007 report has shown that temperature would increase under all the scenarios and especially that of SST (fig1).  Would that point to higher frequencies of hurricane formations? 

A study conducted by Race et al (2010) has shown that there is a high correlation (up to 0.7 for some points) between SST and storm counts in the month of August off the coast of West Africa. However, this is specific in nature and could not be generalized for all ocean basin. Webster et al(2005) noted that there are possible influence of interannual variability associated with El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation which make it hard to draw relation between future increase SST and frequency of hurricane.

Figure 3 showed statistically there is no correlation between increase in the number of Storm days (or number of storm) in relation to the increasing level SST in all ocean Basin. On the other hand, there is substantial decadal-scale oscillation that is especially evident in the number of tropical cyclone days. For example, it peaked at 970 days around 1995 and decreased by 25% to 600 days in 2003.

Figure 3c source Webster et al(2005) 

Figure 4 source Webster et al(2005) 

Figure 3c also showed there is no statistically significant trend linking increasing SST and number of hurricane and displays the same trend as figure 3a/b. The exception is data for the North Atlantic (NATL), which also corresponds to the data found by Race et al (2010), where there is a statistically significant increase in hurricane starting from 1995 in relation to the increased levels of SST.

However, without any comparable correlation in other ocean basin where SST is increasing it means we cannot simply associated the number of storms to a warming SST environment. The ‘coincidence’ in the North Atlantic region, coupled with statistically positive results has fuelled speculation this was the result of climate change via higher SST

More importantly, Webster et al(2005) observed an increase in hurricane intensity between the same periods. As shown in figure 4, strongest categories (4 and 5) have nearly doubled in numbers, occurring in all ocean basins. Emanuel (2005)'s model might provide a insight into the future intensity of hurricanes. His model suggests that an increase of 2 degrees in tropic SST would increase wind speed by 10% and power dissipation by 40-50%. 

Webster et al(2005)'s paper indicates that in the last 30 years, there has been a trend towards more intense hurricanes and they seem to be right. Their observation is consistent with that of Knston et al 2010 (Using a CMIP3 generation model).Their climate model with scenario A1B from IPCC 2007 (for late twenty-first century) predicts there will be an increase in intensity of tropical cyclones of around 2-11% by 2100, and the frequencies of these types of cyclones would increase as well. On the other hand, the general frequency of tropical cyclones would decrease by 6-34%. 

Figure 5 source Emanuel 2013

Figure 6 source  Emanuel 2013

The latest finding from Emanuel (2013) (using a CMIP5-generation global climate model) complicates the picture between climate change, frequency and intensity. One of the main point is that it shows the global frequency of downscaled tropical cyclones will increase throughout the century by around 10-40%, contrary to the results from Knston et al (2010) (not saying they are wrong). The location of the increases in frequencies of tropical cyclones is also shown in fig.5, concentrating in the North Pacific, coincidentally, in the same region as Typhoon Haiyan. At the same time, the increases in the intensity measure by power dissipation index is consistent with the increase in track density (fig 5), concentrating in the North Pacific region. Power dissipation at landfall will increase by around 55% over this century.

The above have shown climate change wasn't the cause of typhoon Haiyan. Evidence suggests climate change up to this point had no/little influence over the frequencies of cyclone formation or to some extent its intensity. Instead, Typhoon Haiyan should be a wakeup call to the vulnerability across the global, especially those near the coastline. The North Pacific region is of concern since the increases in intensity of smaller cyclones are concentrated in that region, whilst frequencies of these small typhoons are also on a upward trend. It also exposes the complex nature of modelling future cyclone behaviour, where results will differ depending on the type of model used, which adds uncertainty to the discourse.

 More importantly, the physicality of the hurricane is only one of the main factors that increases the vulnerability of population. A host of factors from climate change (sea level etc) and human factors (preparedness or GDP ppp etc) also determines the level of social disorder. Hence, I am just showing you one side of the story and the future behaviour of hurricanes should be of concern!  

"Saving Tomorrow Today"

I am going start off with a conversation I had with my friend;

• My friend was complaining to me about her failures of organizing a dinner for around 10 friends; largely due to the differences in budget and preferences on the type cuisine. 
• Later, she was able to get hold of a few of them and started planning for the dinner…however this discussion took place at a station platform and they stood there talking for around 40 minutes. The conclusion from it was a lunch meeting in the following week to plan for the dinner. 
• In essence, they planned for ‘a plan’.  Disagreements with the cuisine and prices raged on during and after the lunch meeting. They finally had their dinner only after few weeks.

Does that remind you of something? Well….to me it sounded like the series of UN climate change conference failures.  Let me explain, just like my friend who ‘planned for a plan’, the same can be said. For example (From Roger Fouguet's book):

• the failure of 2009 UN COP15 in Copenhagen; a last minute PLEDGE was made by HANDFUL of countries 
• which led to 2010 UN COP16 in Cancun , also a failure in term of policy making which led to a consensus on the continuation of negotiation in...
• ... the 2011 UN COP17 in Durbun, which drew up plans for a second period of commitments in 2020 following the Kyoto protocol. This article shows why I think this might be another failure like that of Kyoto.  

Will a second period of global commitment to reduce CO2 emission work?  Looking at the Kyoto Protocol many academics like Prins G & Rayner S, Victor, D and Pielke R have questioned and suggested that it has not been effective at reducing emission. Victor D shows extensively the host of countries which missed their target which includes Japan and the EU. 

Source: OECD (2013), “Emissions of Carbon Dioxide”, in OECD Factbook 2013: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, OECD Publishing.

I also question the extent to which the Kyoto Protocol had scapegoated developing countries for contributing to climate change. An analogy can be made between developing countries and witches; they were both held responsibility for causing climate change. Is developing countries responsible? well partly but looking back at the history of aggregate emission, you would find developed countries like the OECDs contributed the most. It is also evident from the above graph, where aggregation of the total emission from OECD is more than the total from all other countries. The above also highlights the failure of Kyoto as continued to increased substantially. For example, in 2010 OECD countries and China accounted for 65% of global CO2 emission (by fuel combustion), showing a shift in the composition of emission.

The failures of Kyoto brings into doubt a new global treaty on climate change. Just like my friend, the more parties one would involve, the more disagreements there would be and the harder it would be to come to an final agreement. How much time could we waste before we reach the tipping point? If the Kyoto system was extended and keeping intact its mechanism in 2020 then it is for sure that is doomed to fail,which WIlliam Nordhaus discussed in detailed. WIlliam Nordhaus idea of a Harmonized Carbon taxes system is an alternative system that we should pay more attention and demands greater research. It deals with a host of failures from Kyoto especially dealing with discourse between developing and developed countries! It might be the way forward to avoid mass social unrest as this interact IPCC graph shows the estimated projection of a host of factors that is shows our urgency to reduce emission.

Volcano as solution!

Following from last week, as I haven’t mention the causes of the little ice age.  I will talk abit about that. Studies by Geoffrey Parker and Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn have shown that It is predominately linked to the Huaynaputina eruption in Peru (1601) which drastically cool down the earth as Parker had illustrated in the below chart. Showing correlation between the eruption and temperature drop. Additionally,  Bridda, Schweingruber and Osborn proved that the extend of the effects of the ash cloud was previously underestimated and shown by tree ring density and ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica (For more detail refer to there paper on page 452 bottle right).

This gave me an interesting and idea of using ‘ash’ to mitigate the effect of climate change and hence the social and economic instability brought forward for its effect. It turns out a radical thinker called David Keith has brought about this idea already. The below is a link which talks in more detail about his idea.

This would be quite interesting since, the little ice age was brought forward in parts by the largest eruption in the last 600 years. Therefore, if we could use ash clouds to cancel out the effects of future temperature increase, this would buy humanity some more time for more concrete and long term solution.  Potentially delaying the future rise of social disorder that would be accompanied by changes to our climate (to which I will explore on later in this blog,  such as the risk of war etc, because I don’t want to give it away).

The next entry will return back to the idea of scapegoating in the present.

Enjoy the video and until next time. 

Witches; effects of climate on society

To start off ‘Little Ice Age’ refers to the time AD 1570-1730 and in early 19^th century. And unusually warm conditions have followed since the 1920s. This entry will talk specifically about the period between 16^th - 18^th centuries Europe.

Well…to some my title may seem ridiculous, but if a peasant during that period saw this blog they would completely agree with me. Why is this the case? And how would witches be linked to Climate change?

I think its associating goes beyond that suggested in dictionaries like the one below: 

  

I believe this word exposes something greater. It exposes the vulnerability and susceptibility of one’s mentality in a period of agrarian society facing abrupt changes to its climate. It also shows how society reacted throughout the different stages of the Little Ice Age. Beheringer’s paper demonstrated this and showed how governance, society and citizens interlinked, something you don’t get in a quantitative approach. Outlining how witch-hunting evolved due to changes in economic/agricultural condition will expose the dark side of our ancestors.

Some segments of European society associated witches with causing hailstorms. The first systematic witch hunts occurred in the alpine valley, and parts of Switzerland during the 1430s. Only during the 1480s that authorities like the Church accepted the association of weather making with witches which caused bad harvest. However, people’s mentalities towards witchcraft started to converge as climate worsen. The extreme weather in these periods 1560-1574, 1583-1589 and 1623-1630 all contributed to the convergence;

The 1560s had immense snowfall in winter and thaw and rain in spring and summer. This causes major disruptions to agriculture. For example, in Germany it caused inundations which poisoned fields, thereby causing cattle diseases, rising infant mortality and outbreak of epidemics. Some believed it wasn’t the witches like the orthodoxy of Lutheran theology which saw the events as a signs from gods. Opinions differed in small political entities where they often scapegoated the witches for their misfortunes and condemned them to persecution. Eg in the territory of Wiesensteig 63 women were burned each year during the 1560s. Other cities with more complex administrative system saw this as inhumane and places like Stuttgart managed to stop the local witchcraft persecution after one burning.

      The 1580s saw a dramatic turn where witch hunts grew into revolutionary dimensions. Why? Because the socico-economic and ecologic condition worsen. Conflict occurred between the demographic movement, continuous population growth and the narrowing of the food supply. It caused hunger and epidemics and created enormous psychological stress among contemporaries.

     Most local officials in big cities were reluctant since their laws don’t recognise witches to be the cause of weather changes. Combined with inefficient legal administration it meant people took matters into their own hands. Organising witch hunts themselves, capturing and making them confess before delivering to the local authorities. Additionally, for the first time it involved members of high authorities like ruling oligarchies.  In 1586-1587 witchcraft accusation reached their climax in England and France. Large scale witch hunt just began and gaining momentum in Scotland and Germany. On the other hand, some European countries managed to suppress popular demands for witch hunts during the end of the 16^th century because the elites of territorial state felt less endangered and regain power over its citizens.

The climate changes continued to the 1620s. During the last week of May winter returned ad temperature dropped in the midst of the vegetation period further damaging food supply. The abrupt climate changes coupled with socico-economic crisis in Germany has meant that there were new demands for persecutions and created large scale witch hunts. Additionally, many independent feudal lords, counts, prince-abbots or small, rural towns supported the persecutions, sharing the superstitious beliefs of their peasants. This ultimately increased and promoted further witch hunts.

I think is important to give a detailed account of the changes in those periods because this is the only way to understand the full extent of how society worked in times of crisis. The prolong period of abrupt climate changes exposes the inherent weakness of humanity. The administrative power of governments breaks down under popular demand, and in extreme case people taking it in their own hands. The mentalities of individual (from peasants to high-society individuals) changes (and for the worse by searching for scapegoats) as these climate events progressively worsen. With the benefit of hindsight, I think these societies were barbaric, but it seemed like the ‘right thing to do’ if you lived through that period. Could the same thing happen to our modern society if we experience similar or even worse socio-economic and ecological disaster? How would our morality change in time of crisis if we experience global hardship due to climate change? Above all this has shown how society plunged into chaos and disorder. Could this happen to our modern society?