The followers of the religion of love and the religion of peace duking them out.
And we liberals watching on the sidewalk, noting every bit of irony in the episode.
El Niño according to Wikipedia is a sustained temperature anomalies of magnitude greater than 0.5°C across the central Pacific (tag). By that definition, it’s back.
I’m not a meteorologist but I’ve gone through El Niño and I hate it. Hence, its development is of personal concern and I’m preparing for it by adjusting my lifestyle accordingly. I suggest you do the same. Be adaptable or be a dinosaur!
According to Wikipedia further, the first signs of El Niño are:
- Rise in air pressure over the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Australia
- Fall in air pressure over Tahiti and the rest of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean
- Trade winds in the south Pacific weaken or head east
- Warm air rises near Peru, causing rain in the deserts there
- Warm water spreads from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific. It takes the rain with it, causing rainfall in normally dry areas and extensive drought in eastern areas
Mike at RealClimate is kind enough to direct me to an animated diagram by Climate Diagnostics Center of the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that illustrates point 4 and 5:
The diagram ranges from August 2005 till early September this year. In the diagram, you could see how the warmer colors are spreading from Latin America to Southeast Asia. It sucks, isn’t it?
I wonder how next year’s haze’s going to be like.
According to the CDC, NOAA, the diagram is a public domain. So, feel free to spread it.
The Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) with cooperation of TVG at KLCC — a major local cinema — is screening “Temengor – Biodiversity In The Face of Danger” for free. The film is a documentary on Temengor, part of the Belum-Temengor forest complex up north in Perak. It’s the largest continuous forest in Peninsular Malaysia and is currently facing deforestation. The documentary itself was produced by Novista and is being screened in conjunction of the Belum-Temengor Campaign. The campaign itself was launched earlier this year and I’ve given it a passing mention back on Earth Day 2006. I won’t talk about the film per se but instead, I want to share my opinion on possible alliance the campaign organizers could forge to make their effort more successful (tag).
The documentary mentioned several reasons why Temengor should be preserved. One of the reasons concerns the pharmaceutical industry. The narrator in the document said that deforestation there threatens the possible development of new drugs. She went on further that tropical flora species are major contributors to drugs development. Therefore, each day of deforestation reduces humankind’s chance to discover new medicines to fight diseases. One sentence struck me so deeply and it roughly goes something like this: “just as mankind starts to open up the treasure chest, the content begins to disappear.”
After the documentary ended, there was a Q&A session conducted by a representative from MNS. The audience — there were about 30 people in the hall — had a discussion and I shared my thought with everybody. I asked the society’s representative whether the organizers had come in touch with the pharmaceutical industry. My rationale for contact is simple: destruction of the forest reduces the chance the pharmaceutical industry to discover new drugs and essentially, chance to make more money through patents. In essence, the pharmaceutical industry has every incentive to stop deforestation and protect its potential goldmines.
Representative answered that while it’s a good strategy, Malaysia doesn’t have a strong patent law, especially when it comes to the protection of local interest. Somebody followed-up on it and asked whether the government plans to draft a relevant law on it. The representative said that there’s already a draft on it. Given how the current free trade agreement with the United States is heading which is giving lots of stress on intellectual property, I suspect that law would come sooner than later.
In The Carbon Wars by Jeremy Leggett, the author wrote that climate changes cause damages and adversely affect the insurance, or rather the reinsurance, industry. With every damage caused by climate change-related disasters, the cost of business for the industry goes up. Hence, the insurance industry has every reason to support action to slow down climate change. Right now, the reinsurance industry is one of the industries that are actually taking a proactive stance to combat human-induced climate change.
Similar alliance could be created between the greens and the pharmaceutical industry. It’s in the industry’s best interest to protect the its revenue source. Thus, this rationalizes an alliance between the greens and the pharmaceutical industry.
So far, the organizers have only contacted with the banking industry. While the banking industry’s involvement in the Belum-Temengor campaign is encouraging, I don’t believe the banking industry has a strong incentive to save the environment as the pharmaceutical industry does.
p/s – when the Pope said something that isn’t too admirable, regardless his intention, for me it was like “here we go again”. I’m glad that the Pope later apologize and hence possibly closed the controversy down. But it seems the apology isn’t sincere:
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI “sincerely regrets” offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman,” the Vatican said Saturday.
But the statement stopped short of the apology demanded by Islamic leaders around the globe, and anger among Muslims remained intense. Palestinians attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza over the pope’s remarks Tuesday in a speech to university professors in his native Germany.
Moreover, some Christians are disappointed with the Pope’s apology. They said the Pope shouldn’t have apologize. Sorry is the hardest word for them it seems.
Whatever it is, a Catholic school in South Bend isn’t happy regardless of what the Pope said. Reason is, the school — Notre Dame — just got kicked in the ass by a school called Michigan:
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Take that, Notre Dame.
No. 11 Michigan finally put a Big Blue bruising on the second-ranked Fighting Irish in a 47-21 rout Saturday — the most points scored against Notre Dame at home in 46 years.
And Michigan won’t say sorry to Notre Dame. Nope. No way.
Editors at Wikipedia has labelled the article “El Niño-Southern Oscillation” as current news. Surprised, I checked up the news and it seems Wikipedia is right. The little boy is back:
NEW YORK — El Niño, a warming of equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc with world weather conditions, has formed and will last into 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday.
I remember the last time it struck, life wasn’t too comfortable:
In Asia and South America, the last severe El Niño killed hundreds of people and caused billions of dollars in damage as crops shriveled across the Asia-Pacific basin.
With Ramadan around the corner, this will get ugly. But in the same article:
This El Niño has caused drier-than-average conditions across Indonesia, Malaysia and most of the Philippines.
Really? If it’s not, I haven’t felt it. For all I know, it’s been raining for almost everyday for the past few weeks now.