Flood-affected people use a makeshift raft to shift their lamb to a safer place following heavy rains at the Patiapam village
Flood-affected people use a makeshift raft to shift their lamb to a safer place following heavy rains at the Patiapam village in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam, India. REUTERS/Anuwar Hazarika
#Flooding that spread across parts of #Iowa, #SouthDakota & #Minnesota this past weekend is forecast to worsen Mon & Tues as rivers continue to rise. Meteorologists warn that any additional #rain from possible #thunderstorms could extend or heighten the risks.
The #floods are the product of torrential #rain across parts of the upper Mississippi River basin since Thurs, dumping totals of 10”–18” of rain…. Soils were already saturated from months of wetter-than-avg conditions before #storms fueled by intense Gulf of Mexico moisture lingered over the region Thurs–Sat.
That sent runoff into #streams & #rivers & overwhelming #levees…. Rivers are expected to crest Tues or Wed at moderate to record #flood stages.
Nearly 2 million people stranded as second wave of devastating #floods hits #Bangladesh in less than a month
"The widespread flooding was triggered by prolonged torrential rain and water runoff from the hilly regions upstream on the border with India, which caused four rivers to swell beyond their danger marks."
In neighbouring Assam:
"The flood-hit Indian state of #Assam is on high alert as it braces for more rains in the coming days.
The north-eastern state has been inundated by #flood waters for several days, affecting more than 600,000 people and killing at least 34.
All the rivers flowing through the state had crossed the danger mark at several places and that at least 19 of the state's 35 districts had been affected by the floods."
A drone photo shows a flooded area in Fujian province, south-east China. Southern China was reeling from heavy rains that triggered landslides killing at least nine people, knocking out power for entire villages and burying crops
Today in Labor History May 31, 1889: The infamous Johnstown Flood. 2,209 people died when a dam holding back a private resort lake burst upstream from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It was the deadliest U.S. disaster to date. Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati. It caused $17 million of damage (about $490 million in 2020 dollars).
Wealthy industrialists, like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick owned and patronized the resort. (Carnegie also owned Homestead Steel, and Frick was the manager in charge of the butchering of striking workers that occurred there in 1892). They had built cottages and a clubhouse and created the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an exclusive and private mountain retreat. They had also lowered the dam to build a road across it and installed a fish screen in the spillway that tended to trap debris. Investigators believe these alterations contributed to the disaster. Yet none of the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club were found guilty of any crimes. Furthermore, survivors repeatedly lost court cases in their attempts to recover damages due to the club members’ wealth and expensive legal team. However, public outrage did prompt changes in American law leading to one of strict liability in future cases.
The flood has been depicted repeatedly in American culture. Bruce Springsteen references it in “Highway Patrolman.” Rudyard Kipling talked about it in his novel “Captains Courageous.” The Paul Newman film, “Slapshot” takes place in Johnstown. It is also referenced in episodes of Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and dozens of other poems, songs, plays, novels, and works of nonfiction.
A drone view shows Coca-Cola boxes and bottles floating in the water near trucks, amid flooding in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli
Pailona Ramirez from Guarani people looks on during rain at Pindo Poty village after it was flooded, in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
Residents sift through the rubble as they recover their belongings after the Nairobi river burst its banks and destroyed their homes within the Mathare Valley settlement in Nairobi, Kenya April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi
An aerial view shows cracked solidified mud covering a vineyard, in the aftermath of deadly floods in Emilia Romagna, in Forli, Italy, June 1, 2023. REUTERS/Claudia Greco
There's some solid science in this article by @pluralistic, including the observation that "...chlorophyll only makes oxygen in the presence of light, which is notably lacking in your colon"
More importantly, though, he illustrates that the world is complicated and if you just shrug and say it's too complicated or nobody really knows, you're helping the worst of the forces to win. Having a good info environment requires effort to learn and understand complexity.
Steve Bannon isn't wrong: for his brand of nihilistic politics to win, all he has to do is "flood the zone with shit," demoralizing people to the point where they no longer even try to learn the truth.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Today in Labor History March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam failed in Los Angeles, California, killing 431 people. It is the second deadliest disaster in California, after the 1906 earthquake, and one of the worst U.S. civil engineering disasters ever. A defective foundation and design flaws caused the failure. Yet, the inquest absolved chief engineer, William Mulholland, of all criminal responsibility, and he continued to earn a salary from the Bureau of Public Works (though his career was effectively ended). The authorities continued to find the remains of victims of the flood until the mid-1950s. Many of the victims were washed out to sea. Some washed ashore as far south as Mexico. Mulholland was also the designer of the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct, which sucks water from the Owens Valley and is a major cause of the depletion of the fragile Mono Lake. As its water levels continues to decline, it threatens the world’s second largest gull rookery, home to up to 50,000 birds. The aqueduct’s construction, and the shady methods Mulholland used to acquire the water rights, led to the California Water Wars between L.A. County and Owens Valley farmers. Many of those same Anglo farmers (or their predecessors) usurped the land from Piute people during the 1863 Owens Valley Indian War, which was precipitated, in part, by the vast loss of human and cattle lives, and the displacements, caused by the Megaflood of 1861, which inundated much of the West, from Idaho and Oregon, down to northern Baja California. The corruption related to the construction of the aqueduct has been portrayed in the film Chinatown, and in the nonfiction book, “Cadillac Desert.”
And yet
"Almost 400,000 more people moved into than out of the most #flood-prone counties in 2021 and 2022. Same for counties vulnerable to #wildfires and heat.
Consumer-rights group Public Citizen says buyers deserve access to average #HomeInsurance prices by ZIP code over time, which would show where insurers believe risks are spiking and whether they’re paying inflated rates. But insurance companies have blocked such efforts, saying the information is proprietary."