Flooding in Madeira - Tsunami in Thailand

Maniche

First off was Thailand, then Haiti. Now the little island of Madeira gets a beating;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8526288.stm

I feel sorry for the inhabitant. Partly because my mother and my family are located at the island, but also because this is a frightening image that our world is changing. I think.

Is it because of global warming you think?

Maniche

Cojax

Terrible news, hope your family is ok. To answer your question. No. Tsunami's and Earth Quakes have been a common occurrence on this planet for millions of years. Some times you get more in one year, some times you don't.

Maniche

Very true. I guess should have paid attension when we had geografy in class. Oh well.
When I took Haiti and Thailand to the board, I did it because they all were under the gathergory of natural dissasters, since that's what they all are. Right?

Maniche

bugo

Yes, earth quakes and tsunamis have been for a long time, but the quantity in between them have been short, and there are way more then 500 years ago. I read that not sure where tho.

moose

with media and technology spreading as much as it is, i think its more that we are aware and learn about these things, instead of in the past when they'd happen and no one would know (a tree falls in the woods...).

some rediculous footage, looks pretty crazy. hope everyone you know is safe, and the clean up goes well!

MALicivs

Actually and unfortunatily the death toll in madeira is up to 48 right now and 32 still missing. In the aftermath there will be a lot of things to blame, the most important being bad urban planning, but I don't think global warming will be one of them.

Maniche

True.
Then again, the more "modern" buildings are located near the center of Funchal (main city), and the outskirts are more or less concrete housing. When that's said; a majority of Funchal's infrastructure (housing-wise) are still pretty darn old (Old Town-district if I recall correctly).

A mate of mine took some quite awful images; after the rain had settled, it looked like the nature had taken over parts of the city(!), reclaiming it. It looks bad. And when the tourist season is approaching, it wouldn't be good PR if you look at it that way.

I jsut spoke to them so everything is fine with them atleast!
My condolances goes to the family and friends of those whom isn't belong us anymore.

Maniche

Vailias

edit: ninja updated ahead of this post while typing!
Glad your fam is ok.

As to the reasoning etc, don't forget that news reporting has sped up.

also
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

There are earthquakes happening ALL the time.
As of this writing there are 12 quakes reporting on that map in the past 24 hours, most over magnitude 4.. ie your house shakes a bit. Also the population of the earth has gone up by 6 times in the past 200 years, and has doubled since 1960.
More people around means more people to notice and be effected by these events.

The world does not stay the same. ever. It is constantly changing, and has constantly been changing. However we have only had instruments to measure things on a truly global scale in the past 50 years.Prior to that we have occasional temperature and weather records from some of the more industrialized societies, but going further back than a few hundred years is near impossible. And we're talking changes on a geologic time scale here.

Just from recorded history there are always changes, some climatological, some biological, and a lot of times a large number of humans die. Its sad to be sure, but its also very much a part of being a life form on this planet. It is changing, and so are we, slowly but steadily, and every now and again a great number of us have to deal with some tough times. Remember Pompeii? Somewhere between 2 and 20 thousand may have been killed in that eruption (about 2 thousand corpses have been recovered, and population estimates for the pair of buried cities range from 15-30 thousand.) If you scale that disaster to be the same percentage of modern day population it would be somewhere between 43 thousand and 430 thousand deaths.

Really go check out This wikipedia page on world population, it has some interesting data on assorted rises and falls of human population over the centuries.

Edit: Also there was a 5.1 quake about an hour ago in indonesia/Sumatra.
5.1 shouldn't level anything, but it can break water mains and knock some stuff off shelving etc.

Maniche

http://www.demotix.com/news/258357/madeira-mudslides

Interesting map you showed tehre, Vailias.

Maniche

xvampire

i come from Indonesia, land blessed with natural resources and natural species diversity, long beach , 17.000 islands and stable temperature.

problem is : we are standing in ring of fire.

volcanic activity should not be a main concern because of early warning, but
earthquake/ tsunami is way more unpredictable .....

it wasn't a concern because human structure was rare back then, but today, buildings and houses just piled up. yet most ppl still not aware despite the risk level extremely increased.

Thegodzero

Global warming is very real, but like everyone else has said it has nothing to do with earthquakes.

Global warming and global cooling happens over thousands of years. One of the current theory's is; in the future enough of the water on the planet will melt causing a change in the oceans currents, causing the weather to change. That change in the weather will be more clouds, the more clouds the more the planet cools until it returns to an ice age.

Whats different about this time is how fast it happening, and that we are noticing it.

Maniche

Thegodzero wrote: »

Whats different about this time is how fast it happening, and that we are noticing it.

I second that one. I've always had that idea on this "changing climate".

Maniche