extreme weather

‘A Dire Situation’: Flooding Intensifies Gaza Crisis as Israel’s US-Backed Assault Rages

Spread the love

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Displaced Palestinian children are pictured at a flooded makeshift camp in Nuseirat, Gaza on November 26, 2024.
 (Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“For many children, all they have is ruined bits of tent material swimming in swamp water in the camp they fled to for safety.”

Flooding induced by heavy rainstorms in recent days has compounded the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, intensifying the already-high threat of disease as nearly two million displaced people struggle to survive Israel’s U.S.-backed assault.

Save the Children, a humanitarian group working on the ground in Gaza, said Friday that torrential rainfall has transformed makeshift camps into swamps, impacting roughly 235,000 children who have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks and displacement orders.

A Save the Children nutrition consultant who works in Gaza’s flood-affected camps said that most of the tents “are uninhabitable” and wholly inadequate to withstand harsh winter weather. Makeshift tents that now run for miles along Gaza’s coast have been badly damaged or completely destroyed in recent days by rising seawater.

“The tents are made of cloth and similar materials, and the ground is dust and mud, so tents get flooded within five minutes of rain,” said the Save the Children consultant, identified as Mariam. “People’s situation is miserable. A dire situation in terms of health, mental health, and immunity.”

“A mother came in today and apologized for being late. Why? Because it was raining through the night and their tent was flooded,” said Mariam. “The family had to go outside, and she had to carry the children until the rain stopped. Then they swept the water out and went back inside. Some people had to flee because big ponds were formed due to rain. It’s a tragic situation.”

(Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Reuters reported earlier this week that downpours “inundated tents and in some places washed away the plastic and cloth shelters used by displaced Gazans.” The United Nations estimates that around 1.6 million people live in makeshift shelters across Gaza.

“Some placed water buckets on the ground to protect mats from leaks and dug trenches to drain water away from their tents,” according to Reuters. “Many tents used early in the war have now worn out and no longer offer protection, but the price of new tents and plastic sheeting has shot up beyond the means of displaced families.”

Aid workers have warned for months of the threat stagnant water poses to public health in Gaza, whose sanitation infrastructure has been decimated by Israel’s large-scale bombing campaign. One Oxfam campaigner recently described the bomb-ravaged enclave as “a nightmarish landscape of insect and disease-ridden swamps and poisoned wells.”

In a report issued in September, the U.N. Children’s Fund and other organizations noted that “flooding creates stagnant water pools which can become breeding sites for mosquitoes, increasing the risk of diseases such as West Nile Fever.”

Jeremy Stoner, regional director for Save the Children, said Friday that “children in Gaza are not only losing their lives, their limbs, and their loved ones—they are also fleeing their bombed-out homes for camps with conditions less and less fit for human life, as we see more and more restrictions on aid.”

“As this deadly war has shattered the lives and futures of children for over a year now, we have seen access to critical things like food, healthcare, and sanitation stripped away,” Stoner added. “Now for many children, all they have is ruined bits of tent material swimming in swamp water in the camp they fled to for safety.”

Gaza’s health ministry said Friday that the official death toll in the enclave has risen to 44,363 following a series of Israeli attacks across the territory over the past 24 hours.

Since Thursday morning, as Al Jazeera reported Friday, Israeli attacks in central Gaza have killed dozens of people.

“Israeli fighter jets have carried out an intense bombing campaign in the Nuseirat area over the past day, targeting residential buildings and homes, as well as mosques and other public facilities,” the outlet observed. “One Israeli attack on Thursday struck a home sheltering displaced Palestinians, resulting in nine members from one family being killed. Israeli fighter jets also bombed a house in the camp belonging to the Dahdouh family on Friday, killing at least five people.”

Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud said Friday that as Israeli tanks and armored vehicles withdrew from areas of central Gaza that they attacked in the preceding 24 hours, “many displaced people made their way back to Nuseirat refugee camp to check on family members still inside.”

“Many were shocked to find out that their family members were not able to leave due to quadcopters constantly shooting at them,” Mahmoud said. “Many people have been killed either inside their homes or as they were making their way out of their residential buildings into the streets, they said. They are literally collecting bodies right now from the streets.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘A Dire Situation’: Flooding Intensifies Gaza Crisis as Israel’s US-Backed Assault Rages

Eight times more children will face extreme heatwaves by 2050s, Unicef says

Spread the love
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/20/children-extreme-heatwaves-2050s-un

Without action on climate crisis, far greater numbers will also experience floods, wildfires and droughts, according to report

Eight times as many children around the world will be exposed to extreme heatwaves in the 2050s, and three times as many will face river floods compared with the 2000s if current trends continue, according to the UN.

Nearly twice as many children are also expected to face wildfires, with many more living through droughts and tropical cyclones, according to the annual state of the world’s children report.

…

The report, released on Wednesday, World Children’s Day, forecasts how the climate crisis, demographic shifts (sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia are projected to have the largest child populations in the 2050s) and breakthrough technologies will affect children’s lives in the future.

The report said technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) will bring benefits and risks to children, who are already interacting with AI embedded in apps, games and learning software. The digital divide remains stark, however. In 2024, almost 95% of people in high-income countries are connected to the internet, compared with about 25% in low-income countries.

“Children are experiencing a myriad of crises, from climate shocks to online dangers, and these are set to intensify in the years to come,” said Catherine Russell, Unicef’s executive director. “The decisions world leaders make today – or fail to make – define the world children will inherit … Decades of progress, particularly for girls, are under threat.”

Much of the emphasis of the report is on the impact of the climate crisis on children, nearly half of whom (approximately 1 billion) live in countries that face a high risk of environmental disasters. Even before they take their first breath, children’s brains, lungs and immune systems are susceptible to pollution, disease and extreme weather. As they grow, their education, nutrition, safety, security and mental health are shaped by the climate and environment.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/20/children-extreme-heatwaves-2050s-un

Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

Continue ReadingEight times more children will face extreme heatwaves by 2050s, Unicef says

Report Details Record-Breaking Health Threats of Climate Crisis, Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Spread the love

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People wade through floodwaters in Feni, Bangladesh, on August 25, 2024. (Photo: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“No individual or economy on the planet is immune from the health threats of climate change,” said a lead researcher.

Over $1 trillion spent each year on subsidizing fossil fuel production must be redirected to public health efforts, said the experts behind a new annual report monitoring progress on the climate and global health.

The 2024 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, published Tuesday in The Lancet by the Lancet Countdown at Universiy College London (UCL), found that delayed action on the climate emergency is exposing people across the globe to record-breaking threats, with 10 of 15 indicators showing that specific health threats have reached “concerning new levels.”

“This year’s stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet in our eight years of monitoring,” said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown and a senior research fellow at UCL. “Once again, last year broke climate change records—with extreme heatwaves, deadly weather events, and devastating wildfires affecting people around the world.”

With 2023 named the hottest year on record earlier this year by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the researchers behind the new report found that the average person experienced an additional 50 days of dangerously hot weather that would not have happened without fossil fuel extraction heating the planet.

Heat-related deaths among people over age 65 reached the highest level ever recorded, 167% higher than in the 1990s and more than double the 65% increase that was expected if temperatures hadn’t changed since then.

An additional 151 million people across 124 countries experienced moderate or severe food insecurity last year, an increase that was associated with extreme drought that affected almost half of global land area.

“We must cure the sickness of climate inaction—by slashing emissions, protecting people from climate extremes, and ending our fossil fuel addiction.”

Changing climate conditions across the globe and the flooding that has come with more frequent hurricanes and tropical storms are also fueling a rise in the transmission of infectious diseases like dengue fever, according to the Lancet Countdown, and warmer coastal waters contributed a record-high number of cases of the bacterial infection vibriosis last year.

“The mosquitoes that spread infections like dengue fever epidemics are reaching new countries, and gradually moving north,” said Anthony Costello, a professor at UCL Institute for Global Health and co-chair of the countdown.

But despite those indicators and others, said Romanello, “we see financial resources continue to be invested in the very things that undermine our health.”

Researchers expressed optimism about rising investments in renewable energy, but warned that new fossil fuel investment accounted for more than a third of new energy spending in 2023, and 84% of world governments continue to subsidize fossil fuel production despite clear warnings from scientists that oil and gas extraction have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.

Governments are “in effect paying an estimated $1.4 trillion dollars per year to worsen the crisis,” reportedThe Hill.

Meanwhile, “only 68% of countries reported high-to-very-high implementation of the legally mandated capacities to manage health emergencies in 2023,” according to the Lancet Countdown. Just 35% of countries reported having early warning healthcare systems for heat-related illness.

“No individual or economy on the planet is immune from the health threats of climate change,” said Romanello. “The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far and put a healthy future further out of reach.”

Total carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion reached nearly 40 gigatonnes last year, a 1.1% increase from 2022, contributing to high levels of air pollution as well as changing climate conditions.

“National-level net subsidies exceeded 10% of national health spending in 55% of the countries, and 100% in 27% of them,” reads a visual summary of the report. “These funds could be redirected towards supporting the transition to clean energy sources, protect vulnerable populations from soaring climate change risks, and enable a healthy future.”

Redirecting fossil fuel subsidies “would provide the opportunity to deliver a fair, equitable transition to clean energy and energy efficiency, and a healthier future, ultimately benefiting the global economy,” said Romanello.

Released less than two weeks before world governments are set to convene in Azerbaijan for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), where climate finance is expected to be a key issue, the report calls for “new strategies and finance for implementation” in order to protect global public health from climate disasters.

“These must acknowledge climate change’s effects on health and related systems, assess risks and vulnerabilities, and incorporate resilience to shocks,” reads a joint brief by the Lancet Countdown and Médecins Sans Frontières, also called Doctors Without Borders. “Adequate, predictable, and unified climate finance for adaptation and technical support is urgently needed to enable ministries of health and their implementing partners to adopt forward-thinking strategies, integrate anticipatory actions, and enhance flexibility and agility in their operating models.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the report shows “we must cure the sickness of climate inaction—by slashing emissions, protecting people from climate extremes, and ending our fossil fuel addiction—to create a fairer, safer, and healthier future for all.”

To shift resources toward a “zero-emissions future,” said Costello, “people’s health must be put front and center of climate change policy to ensure the funding mechanisms protect well-being, reduce health inequities and maximize health gains, especially for the countries and communities that need it most.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingReport Details Record-Breaking Health Threats of Climate Crisis, Fossil Fuel Subsidies

‘This Is Climate Change’: Devastating Flooding Kills More Than 70 in Spain

Spread the love

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A view of the damaged area after a deluge brought up to 200 liters of rain per square meter (50 gallons per square yard) in hours in towns across the region of Valencia, Spain on October 30, 2024. (Photo: Alex Juarez/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” one climate group said.

Spain’s deadliest flooding in 30 years killed at least 72 people as torrential rain slammed the eastern region of Valencia on Tuesday, with some towns recording a year’s worth of rain in a single day.

The flooding sent churning muddy water down narrow streets, tossing cars, downing trees, bulldozing bridges and buildings, and trapping people in rising flood waters.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” Christian Viena, who owns a bar in Valencia’s Barrio de la Torre, told The Associated Press. “Everything is a total wreck, everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is almost 30 centimeters (11 inches) deep.”

https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1851377469942562964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851377469942562964%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

Sorry, this content could not be embedded.

X

As of Wednesday morning, officials reported 70 deaths in Valencia and two in the bordering region of Castilla La Mancha. However, the death toll could rise as search and rescue operations continue amid difficult conditions, such as power outages and blocked roadways. Many people remain missing with their fates uncertain.

This includes residents of Utiel in Valencia, whose mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón, told Spanish broadcaster RTVE that Tuesday was the “worst day of my life.”

“We were trapped like rats,” Gabaldón said. “Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 meters (9.8 feet).”

One person who was rescued was Denis Hlavaty, who spent the night perched on the edge of the roof of a gas station where he works.

“It’s a river that came through,” Hlavaty told Reuters, adding, “The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 metres (6.5-feet) deep.”

“The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”

The storm also canceled high-speed rail travel between Valencia and Madrid and Barcelona, and derailed one high-speed train near Malaga, though no one was injured.

While the rains had tapered off in Valencia by Wednesday morning, the rest of the country is not out of danger, as the storm is projected to move northeast.

“We mustn’t let our guard down because the weather front is still wreaking havoc and we can’t say that this devastating episode is over,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the nation on television Wednesday.

Even if the death toll does not rise, Tuesday’s floods are already the deadliest in Spain since 1996, when a flood near the Pyrenees killed 87. They are also the deadliest in Europe since floods in 2021 that killed at least 185.

In the immediate term, Tuesday’s deluge was caused by a phenomenon called a gota fría, or “cold drop,” a storm formed as cold air moves over the warm Mediterranean. In Spain, these kinds of storms are also commonly referred to with the acronym DANA—for Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, or isolated high-level depression.

However, scientists observe that the climate crisis is making rainstorms like this one more extreme, as warmer air can hold more moisture to dump when conditions are right. For Europe specifically, the warming of the Mediterranean causes more water to evaporate from its surface, super-charging rainstorms.

“Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater,” Ernesto Rodriguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association, told Reuters.

https://twitter.com/DaveThroup/status/1851315836239110151?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851315836239110151%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

Sorry, this content could not be embedded.

X

The Spanish flooding comes a little more than a month after record rainfall swamped Central Europe and Eastern Europe, in an event that scientists concluded was made approximately twice as likely and 7% more severe by the climate crisis fueled primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

“When we talk about climate change and climate emergency, it’s often perceived as an abstract concept far from our daily reality,” Eva Saldaña, the executive director of Greenpeace Spain, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this is climate change: the intensification of extreme weather phenomenons like what happened tonight, with the level of destruction greater each time. Ignoring it causes deaths that we cannot allow.”

In a post on social media, Greenpeace Spain said that fossil fuel companies including the Spanish Repsol should pay for the damages.

“DANAS are more intense every time due to climate change,” the group wrote. “The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”

Extinction Rebellion Global agreed. “These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” the group wrote on social media.

The U.S.-based Climate Defiance, meanwhile, shared images of flood-ravaged streets with dismissals often leveled at climate activists.

https://x.com/ClimateDefiance/status/1851390346145788144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851390346145788144%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

Sorry, this content could not be embedded.

X

https://twitter.com/ClimateDefiance/status/1851605825346764852?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851605825346764852%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

Sorry, this content could not be embedded.
X

Yellow Dot Studios, Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay’s climate-focused media studio, also shared an image of cars dropped in piles in the street by the flood waters to call out the double-standard in how direct-action climate protests and the corporate crimes of the fossil fuel industry are punished.

https://twitter.com/weareyellowdot/status/1851637056126308480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851637056126308480%7Ctwgr%5Ecee4dacd5fa098e03f39569643b409cc286a36a7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fclimate-deadly-flooding-spain

Sorry, this content could not be embedded.

X

Friends of the Earth Spain focused on the human impacts, arguing that urgent climate action meant “putting people’s lives, and not economic models, at the center.”

“Don’t prioritize sending people to work in extreme and dangerous conditions,” the group wrote. “It is a priority to take effective, ambitious, and urgent measures in response to the climate crisis we are living through.”

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

dizzy: It’s almost as if Elon Musk’s X is censoring the climate crisis!

Continue Reading‘This Is Climate Change’: Devastating Flooding Kills More Than 70 in Spain

Fossil-Fueled Hurricane Milton Hammers Florida With Violent Winds, Massive Flooding

Spread the love

Original artitcle by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A vehicle is stranded on a water-flooded street after Hurricane Milton made landfall in Brandon, Florida on October 9, 2024.
 (Photo: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images)

“If politicians had listened to scientists decades ago, and worked to gradually rein in fossil fuel pollution, the ocean wouldn’t be so boiling hot—and Hurricane Milton wouldn’t have had the fuel to balloon into such a monster storm.”

Hurricane Milton made landfall south of Tampa, Florida late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm after rapidly intensifying in the Gulf of Mexico, bringing devastating flooding and powerful winds that destroyed homes and knocked out power for millions.

Several tornadoes triggered by the monstrous storm—which was made stronger by ocean temperatures pushed higher by fossil fuel-driven climate change—killed an unspecified number of residents on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, according to local authorities.

The Associated Press reported that “about 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane came ashore, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens.”

More than a million Floridians were under evacuation orders as Milton barreled toward the state.

While Milton was downgraded to a Category 2 storm shortly after making landfall and was tracking away from Florida’s East Coast Thursday morning, the National Weather Service warned that “life-threatening storm surge, extreme winds, and flooding rains will continue to occur.”

Video footage posted to social media provided a glimpse of the flooding in downtown Tampa:

Experts characterized Milton, which followed closely on the heels of Helene, as a historically powerful hurricane, pointing to its rapid transformation from a tropical storm into a Category 5 hurricane.

“Milton is the quickest storm on record to rapidly intensify into a Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico,” according to CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan.

Ahead of Milton’s arrival in Florida, climate advocates and scientists pointed to the role of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies in misleading the public about the impacts of oil, gas, and coal emissions and obstructing action to confront the threat posed by warming temperatures.

“Things didn’t have to be this way,” Kathy Baughman McLeod, the CEO of Climate Resilience for All, wrote Wednesday. “If politicians had listened to scientists decades ago, and worked to gradually rein in fossil fuel pollution, the ocean wouldn’t be so boiling hot—and Hurricane Milton wouldn’t have had the fuel to balloon into such a monster storm.”

Original artitcle by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingFossil-Fueled Hurricane Milton Hammers Florida With Violent Winds, Massive Flooding