The Philippines

Doesn't it just. Dreadful when you see those poor families trying to cope.

Apparently it was the most powerful storm to ever hit land. The amount of people killed is enormous. It does make you wonder why some people have it so hard and for others life is a piece of cake.

Absolutely awful. I felt so sorry for that woman who had just given birth. What a start in life for that child amid the famine and disease.

I find the scale of the disaster unimaginable and words cannot do it justice.

It is almost unwatchable - I have to switch off. Those poor people. What a cruel world this can be. I am glad we are sending £6 million in aid, and no doubt a specific fund will be opened soon for donations.

It's just like watching the devastation of the Boxing Day tsunami all over again. When nature can do this, you realise the futility of conflict.

Hopefully the world will respond as well as they(we) did when the Boxing Day Tsunami hit.

Makes me ashamed to be fed up with the foggy weather. Life is so cruel for some people

Terrible to see all the wrecked houses and lives.

We lost 5 people when we had that storm a few weeks ago. They have lost 10,000 and probably more + houses have been totally demolished, not the odd tree falling into a road.

It definitely puts it into perspective.

I have just been reading about it in my paper . It is just heartbreaking for these poor , poor souls .

Christian Aid already has a very strong presence in the Philippines and has set up an emergency fund. So too has the Red Cross. The DEC has been slower than usual to respond, but no doubt will be launching an appeal before today is out. These people desperately need targeted aid and even a small donation is of enormous help.
Please too, think of the Filipino's working in this country (there are many) who are distraught whilst waiting for news of family and friends.

Yes I was just going to mention the many nurses and others, who must be terribly worried about their families.
When things like this happens it is a reminder that by giving to one of the major disaster relief charities all the year round it enables them to respond quickly.

Happy to see Sheltebox is also on the case:

shelterbox.org/news_global.php?id=1200

But oh, those poor people - one disaster after another. And I complain about the downpours of rain we have, which inconvenience me!!

When a typhoon or hurricane makes landfall it makes a tremendous difference exactly where it comes ashore (usually, the shoreline is the worst hit, more than inland), and how populated it is, and how well built the dwellings are. We were unlucky this time that it hit a city that was not up to it. This is a very big loss of life, no doubt about it, and no doubt we haven't heard the last of it as teams get further into the area.

"Apparently it was the most powerful storm to ever hit land." Fortunately this isn't true, or things would have been even worse! As so often the case, these days, journalistic standards are not what they were, and even the BBC are not worth reading so long as Matt McGrath and his team are in charge of environmental reporting. I see the BBC have corrected their page now, but they (along with some tabloids) were reporting windspeeds of 235mph. Now that would have been a super-typhoon, and definitely a Cat5. However, it was actually 235 km/h, so 147mph. Strong, but actually a Cat4, which is not unusual, and certainly not the worst to hit land. Luckily for us, most typhoons do miss land, though. I was caught in a typhoon in the Philippines myself some while back, and while it was only (as I recall) a Cat2, and we didn't get the full brunt of it (Manila took a hammering from that one) it was, shall we say, 'interesting'.

We are also very 'lucky' (doesn't feel like much luck, I know) that it is a waxing gibbous moon, so no spring tides added to the storm surge. You recall that what made the extra-tropical storm that hit NY a couple of years back so damaging was that it came when there were high spring tides.

Thanks for the information, wingnut. However, no matter how meteorologists may argue the toss about the strength of the typhoon, nothing can detract from the devastation wrought on a vulnerable population.

Nor was I attempting to, I simply corrected a piece of misinformation in the media.

Ah, those metric vs imperial measure continue to challenge journalists.

Can I suggest any climate change deniers among you read the following

www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/science-environment-24899647 >

OK, I read it. Was it supposed to be convincing in some way? To be convincing, I would want a rational argument based on observable evidence, but what this gave was emotional rhetoric from politicians. I don't doubt his sincerity, only the basis for his argument. I am not convinced by rhetoric, nor swayed by propaganda, and 'climate change denier' is propaganda intended to silence any discussion of the current dogma. That is not science, that is politics. He is right to be emotional about the destruction caused by this typhoon, and right to want to take steps to prevent it happening again. But taking steps in the wrong direction helps nobody, so we should always look at the facts, and not emotional appeals.

And what are those facts? Well, we are not experiencing an increase in 'extreme weather' events. The Atlantic hurricane season has finished and been remarkably quiet, and ditto the tornado season. The Pacific typhoon season has been about average, higher side for tropical storms, low side for typhoon and super typhoons. Unfortunately, one of them made landfall in a bad place, and caused great destruction, but that doesn't change the picture.

Temperatures haven't increased now for at least 17 years, even though CO2 levels have gone up faster than was being predicted in the '90s. It was warmer in the previous interglacial (the Eemian), warmer in the Holocene Climactic Optimum, and progressively cooler in each succeeding warm period (the Minoan, the Roman, the Mediaval, and the Modern). From the geological evidence, it appears that CO2 has a fairly small effect, and of course is logarithmic.

Now let's consider the central argument itself. CO2 was predicted to have a climate sensitivity of around 1 deg per doubling (hence logarithmic). Nobody cares about that, because everybody agrees that it is net beneficial up to 2 degrees. The scare was that there was a positive feedback effect on water vapour, a much more common and powerful greenhouse gas. Well, is there? Water vapour levels have been monitored, and in fact it is not increasing. Without that, there is no concern from CO2. That doesn't mean the climate isn't changing, it has always changed (hence the stupidity of the 'climate change denier' meme, since the only denier I can think of is Michael Mann, who tried to get rid of the MWP). We know that CO2 levels were around 17x higher at the start of the Carboniferous/Permian ice age, yet it certainly didn't stop it. A reasonable conclusion is that CO2 may have an effect on temperature, but the feedbacks are negative so it isn't much.

My main concern is that the climate will get colder. Two of the three main natural forcings have now gone negative (all three were positive during the period when temperatures were increasing, 1980-1998). That is solar activity and the PDO. The AMO will go negative around 2018, which has a much bigger affect on us in Europe. Cold is much more harmful than warmth. But then again, since we don't know what made us come out of the Little Ice Age, we don't know if whatever caused it has finished yet, so it may get warmer again for a while. We just don't know at this stage.

Hello wingnut and welcome to Gransnet. Perhaps you'd like to tell us a little bit about yourself? There have been many threads about climate change and I suspect that most of us will never know in our lifetime what the long term effects will be - but it remains an interesting topic for discussion.
However, getting back to the current disaster, I do hope that aid arrives in the right places as quickly as possible, but so often it's a case of too little, too late. Because of the frequency of weather related problems in this area, I'm hoping that the many agencies already there will quickly be able to target the aid to the greatest need.

Yes lets. Very difficult circumstances. The Phillipines is such a dispersed island nation, their airports are seriously damaged and their usual mobile phone coverage has been destroyed in places by the storm.

Evidently Cameron is sending one of Britian's war ships, currently in Singapore, with personnel and equipment to help the people in the Phillipines. It will take about 5 days to arrive. I'm off to donate to one of the major charities. The devastation shown on the tv news last night was heart breaking.

Hi wingnut and welcome. The science lesson was interesting. You have a familiar style! Also carboncareful thanks for that, I thought denier had something to do with tights.

My heart goes out to the people who are dealing with the consequences of the recent weather occurrence in the Phillipines, I hope they get meaningful aid.