The full effects of Hurricane Irma have still to be realized; as this monster storm has already left a trail of unprecidented devistation in the Caribbean with small island communities being almost totally damaged. Huge “super typhoons” in the Pacific ocean basin have recently caused similar mayhem in the Philippines, Taiwan, coastal China and Japan. With all of this in mind, and particularly following Hurricane Harvey, which caused massive damage and flooding in coastal Texas areas, are these storms being fueled by global warming?

The answer appears to focus on the fact that the waters of both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean basins are simply warming up. This increase in sea water temperatures is causing Arctic ice to melt even more rapidly than previously thought; and as a result, is literally rocking world weather.

Concerns about the effects of global warming on world weather patterns are not anything new. Numerous scientific articles as well as “doomsday prophecy” movies about this subject have been around for some time now. One good example of a futuristic world ravaged by global warming was an American television film entitled The Fire Next Time, first screened in April, 1993.

The two part TV movie portrayed an American landscape in the year 2017 plagued by ozone depletion and global warming.

This was resulting in frequent monster hurricanes in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, massive forest and brush fires in California and other western states; and scorching temperatures and drought in most of the Continental USA.

What brings this message home is that we are now in the year 2017, with much of what was prophesied in 1993 now becoming reality.

Already, four hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, Katia and Jose have now been formed in the Atlantic Basin in the past month alone, with three of them now active. Jose, a Category 3 storm, is coming close on the heels of Irma, with its final path and destruction still to be determined. A massive brush wildfire is still burning in California’s Los Angeles area, with a state of emergency being declared for 3 LA area counties.

On top of all this, large areas of the American west and southwest are still under critical drought conditions. Taking all of this into mind, is the current state of global warming and climate change that much different than that predicted back in 1993?

Or maybe our new knowledge and fear of these events are due to social media?

Other parts of the world, including Spain, Portugal, and many locations in the Mediterranean basin are now experiencing severe drought conditions with much of the Middle East suffering the “worst drought in 900 years”, according to NASA .

The Fire Next Time? It really appears to be happening now.

More on the effects of climate change:

New effects of climate change are a drastic warning. will President Trump listen now?

It’s not the tide. It’s not the wind. It’s us.

NASA calls Middle East drought “worst in 900 years”

The post Are monster hurricanes and typhoons fueled by global warming? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dubbed an “urban musical attraction”, the sea organ – named “Morske orgulje” – isn’t new, nor is the concept of musical infrastructure. In 1986, artist Peter Richards and master stone mason George Gonzalez designed a wave-activated acoustic sculpture on a jetty in San Francisco Bay. They built their “Wave Organ” (pictured below) using elements from a demolished cemetery, materials well-suited to the eerie tones they produce.

The California jetty was, in turn, inspired by “sound sculptor” Bill Fontana who had recorded sounds emanating from a vent-pipe in a floating concrete dock in Sydney, Australia.

The Croatian installation came online in 2005, as part of a larger program of urban renewal. Zadar had been partly destroyed during World War II,  leaving a landscape of damaged concrete and a battered shoreline seawall. Bašić designed a jetty that would work as both environmental infrastructure (a protective embankment against wave action) and community asset (it’s a popular lunch-spot for tourists and locals). Tune in to a bit of wave jam, below:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeGDjvCCkfk[/youtube]

The 230-foot jetty contains 35 polyethylene tubes of varying size that thread through a central, subterranean service channel within the larger structure. Waves push seawater through the underwater tubing and force air up through ground-level “whistles” tuned to play seven chords of five tones.  The result is continual music, with unique timing choreographed by the changing patterns of the waves. Bašić’s Sea Organ won the 2006 European Prize for Urban Public Space.

So what’s this bit of European civil engineering got to do with the Middle East?

United Nations scientists have declared 2015 as the hottest year on record, with a month of record-keeping still to go. They’ve also declared 2011 to 2015 the hottest recorded time-span, linking our warming planet to stronger storms, more severe droughts and rising sea levels. Global sea level averages during the first half of the year were the highest since records began in 1993.

“The state of the global climate in 2015 will make history as for a number of reasons,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a press release. “Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached new highs.” This bad news is part of a “preliminary statement,” as the agency’s full report won’t be released until after the Paris climate talks.

Look to the Persian Gulf, and quickly see how vulnerable Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to rising seas.  Scan the southern Mediterranean, and consider impacts to coastal cities in Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon. Potentially devastating impacts will make the current humanitarian exodus from Syria and Iraq look like a small town parade. And what better to go with a parade than a band, perhaps of music played by incessantly lapping waves?

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