Category Archives: Disasters

More Dust Bowls on the way

Gaskill, M. 27 Nov 2012. Climate Change Threatens to Create a Second Dust Bowl. Rising temperatures, persistent drought, and depleted aquifers on the southern Great Plains could set the stage for a disaster similar to the Dust Bowl of the … Continue reading

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Dust Bowls

Excerpts from: Joseph Romm. 24 May 2012. My Nature Piece On Dust-Bowlification And the Grave Threat It Poses to Food Security. Human adaptation to prolonged, extreme drought is difficult or impossible. Historically, the primary adaptation to dust-bowlification has been abandonment; … Continue reading

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Drought cost more than hurricane in 2012

Jeff Masters. 16 Nov 2012. Lessons from 2012: Droughts, not Hurricanes, are the Greater Danger. wunderground.com The colossal devastation and loss of life wrought by Hurricane Sandy makes the storm one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history. The storm … Continue reading

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Volcanic Eruptions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A big enough explosion anywhere in the world could cool the earth enough to affect agricultural production world-wide for a year or two. Countries with active volcanoes most likely to cause enough financial losses to … Continue reading

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Earthquakes in Oregon and Washington

These states could suffer some of the strongest quakes possible, over 9.0 on the Richter scale from the Cascadian subduction zone: Earthquake (Cost/Where): $  33 billion / Seattle area / Seattle fault

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Earthquakes in Japan – up to $200 Trillion cost

These are just a few of the earthquake faults and their estimated costs in Japan: Earthquake (Cost/Where): $200 Trillion / Tokyo Earthquake Deaths: 320,000 people if a magnitude 9 occurred off central and western Japan, with the tsunami accounting for … Continue reading

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Earthquakes in California – up to $69 billion cost

These are just a few of the earthquake faults and their estimated costs in California: Earthquake (Cost/Where): $  69 billion / Southern California Puente Hills fault $  54 billion / Northern California San Andreas Fault $  49 billion / Southern … Continue reading

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$40 billion cost when levee system fails in California’s delta

Scientists estimate this would cost $40 billion dollars. 23 million Californians will have no drinking water. Up to 1 million acres of some of the best, most productive farmland in the world will disappear forever as salt water permeates the … Continue reading

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Drought and the Food Supply

  Annie Lowrey. 25 Jul 2012. Severe Drought Seen as Driving Cost of Food Up.  New York Times. Scorching heat and the worst drought in nearly a half-century are threatening to send food prices up, spooking consumers and leading to … Continue reading

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History of Drought in America since 1899 – Worst ever now

The dust bowls of the 1950s were worse than the famous dust bowls of the Great Depression.  The conditions for a new dust bowl are happening again, only this time we’ve cut down the trees so that 27 ton tractors … Continue reading

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