What 2022 brought to us and looking forward to 2023

Liberation

Lots of people thought 2022 would be the year of liberating us from that terrible virus which got the world in its grip. Though not a liberation became several people on their part, an even more senseless killing ‘disease’ came unto Europe.

The leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, who would love to find a renewed Soviet Union, said at the beginning of the year he would bring liberation to the Ukrainians. Instead, his “bloodstained” tyranny plunged Europe into the war on a scale not seen since 1945 as Russian troops advanced on Kyiv on Thursday night, February 24th.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is shocking and disgraceful. It is the latest terrible aggression by the Putin regime and the latest damaging conflict in our world, with so many people being killed or injured, losing loved ones and seeing their homes destroyed.

2022 has been a tough year to navigate, with a series of political and economic crises that continue to shape our world.

One powerful man

Who could have ever imagined that one man, from up north, would single-handedly turn the world upside down? However, he has succeeded very well in not only bringing black snow over several people, and literally turning the landscape blood-red, he has severely disrupted economic life in several countries.

Following two long pandemic years – with many still experiencing the effects – we’ve witnessed the outbreak of war in Ukraine and could feel in our purse how it affects us also in our region. We cannot ignore this war that has affected many citizens. At our new WordPress Site “Some View on the World” we have given a voice to those suffering in the conflict as well as reporting the situation on the ground and providing the expertise needed to understand geopolitics.

Picturing what is happening in the world

As best we can, we try to give a picture of what is happening in the world on the continuation of “Our World“. 2022 was another year of figuring out how we would be able to keep up with bringing political and religious news alongside our other spiritual websites. We hope to find that balance further in 2023.

By nature, I am not an easy person and have dared to clash several times by speaking my mind outright. Even in the articles, I publish here and on my other websites, my thinking is based on my personal opinion. One can agree or disagree with that view. I, therefore, appreciate that people also dare to express their opinions. But in general, there is a little reaction in that area. Still, I hope the articles brought, can make people think. For instance, I was happy to find that my op-eds on Christmas in the Daily Telegraph were able to bring a debate after all.

Hoping to expose wrongdoings

With the news we place at Some View on the World we do hope we also could be able to expose the mistreatment and deaths of migrant workers in Qatar for almost a decade as well as other wrong attitudes towards people as well as animals and plants. At my personal site and this site as well, in particular on “Some View on the World” we continue to bear witness to the climate crisis as it destroys lives, uproots whole communities and changes the course of our shared future. We hope for 2023 to be able to bring regular news about our environment.

The fallout from the January 6 hearings and Donald Trump’s presidency could get our attention, and we hold our hearts for the intentions of Mr Trump, wanting to come back as president of the U.S.A..

Independence of my websites

For all the reporting we do here, and on my other websites, I would like to remind you, readers, that there is no financial support from companies anywhere and that all reporting is based on personal and independent reporting, where I keep searching for this site among texts that appear on the net what could possibly be fascinating for you to read as well, and thus to reblog them here.

2022 could bring lots of blogs on the net of which we presented some selections over here too. At Firefox several could find their way into ‘Pocket’, like: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, How to Want Less, A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory, Why You Should Really Stop Charging Your Phone Overnight, A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything, a.o. most read.

Uncovering and unravelling

Whether on social, political or religious issues, we are eager to seek the truth and expose false reports. Exposing wariness is not always appreciated, but is very important in our view. To do that, we can count on several investigative journalists and some newspapers to join in the pursuit of that muddle, so that together we can make certain things known to the world while others would rather see them covered up.

At Some View on the World we have maintained round-the-clock coverage from several places, not always bringing nice news, like mass graves of Bucha, Izium and many war crimes.

The war accelerated a global economic slump, sending costs soaring, throttling energy supplies and raising the spectre of blackouts, malnutrition and a winter of discontent across dozens of countries. As global food supplies fluctuated, we reported on the hunger gripping the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan. In 2022, it became impossible to ignore those victims in poorer countries. But sadly, we had to observe how little the public cared about those people living far from their homes. And closer, many did not wish to have refugees, so we could speak of a refugee crisis again this year.

Here in Belgium, the influx of refugees seems completely uncontrollable and many, even with small children, shamefully had to sleep outside several nights through rain and wind. This while in Great Britain, the reception was also not going smoothly and people started looking for a housing solution in Rwanda, and proceeded to deportations.

Condition of mother earth

A lot of people do not want to realise that things are very bad for Mother Earth. To this, in 2022, several scientists again tried to make it clear to the world that we need to think seriously about this and take action. We were confronted with UK’s hottest summer, a very early and long great Summer in Belgium, drought in Europe, and the accompanying fires.

Heating the houses became for many difficult to keep in the household budget. It looked like mother nature felt the pressure on the energy market, as well. Everywhere in Europe, we had extremely high temperatures for the time of year. In Belgium 2022 became the warmest year since measurements.

The climate emergency ran as a constant thread through much of our Some View on the World journalism in 2022.

While many European countries were suffering from a shortage of water, they had it in other countries, like Pakistan, too much. Devastating floods in Pakistan, encountering one of its worst natural catastrophes, Sydney’s wettest year on record, ferocious heatwaves in the US southwest and the costliest Atlantic hurricane for years, could catch our attention.

At Cop27 in Egypt, the Guardian asked the tough questions. Though, we did not give so much attention to the changing tactics of activists, now more likely to throw soup at a painting as they are to glue themselves to a public highway.

Uprising

In my view, many other protests could get our attention earlier, as they were carried out in a more correct way. Coming from a not expected corner, sparked by the death in custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini.

Once again, we were able to conclude in Afghanistan and Iran that there is no improvement in human rights yet. The Iranian authorities tightly control reporting inside the country, so we counted on the teams of the Guardian to redouble efforts to reach protagonists to tell their stories. Social media remained also important for this, so it was satisfying to see the Guardian Instagram video on why Iranians are risking everything for change reach more than 2 million viewers.

It is impossible for me to have news sources everywhere, which is why we must also call on professional companies, for which we must also pay. Financial aid is therefore very welcome to cover these expenses. Nevertheless, we try to be as aware as possible of the general events, for which we also make further use of the known news channels and reliable TV channels and newspapers.

United States debacle

In terms of exposure, it was imperative to look at the Trumpists who still claim high and low that the US elections were forged.

The country which was formed on the idea that it could be a free world where everybody could express himself freely and would not be bounded by limitations through a government, in 2022 came to see deep political divisions, caused by a man who as 45th president of the U.S.A. did mutiny on that state and brought democracy in danger. His party made the ongoing climate crisis and racial, economic and health inequalities worsened. It was impossible to ignore the fallout from the January 6 hearings and Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as his willingness to come back as president.

The repeal of Roe v Wade provided a divisive backdrop to the November midterm elections. The conservative, or better said, the extremist Christians in the U.S., made it possible that women lost even the right to their own bodies. They also did not want to give an eye for mother nature nor for all those poor Americans who have no house or anywhere to live except on the streets, where many in the last weeks of the year found their dead by Winter storm Elliott. Buffalo got the worst hit by that bomb cyclone.

Political storms

In 2022 there were more significant elections in America which caught our attention. In Brazil, there were an anxious few weeks as Jair Bolsonaro wanted to do like his friend Trump, saying the votes were falsified. Finally, he suffered a chastening defeat by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who completed a comeback from prison to the presidential palace.

To our annoyance, we in northern Europe had to observe an inverse movement towards South America. The far right in Sweden, Italy and Israel, could get most seats in parliament. Despite her political prowess, the 45-year-old from Rome, whose strong will and determination has drawn comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, Giorgia Meloni has spent three decades fighting her way to the top of Italian politics. She is clear evidence that go-getters win. In October last year, after Brothers of Italy managed to draw votes away from the Northern League in its northern strongholds in local elections, a secret recording revealed Matteo Salvini hitting out at Meloni, calling her a “pain in the ass”.

In Belgium, too, the newspapers disguised several polls, clearly showing that the right is making a strong rise and where voices can already be heard that NVA will have to make the choice to form a majority coalition with Vlaams Belang.

As for British politics, prime ministers came and went with alarming regularity and the nation buried the pound, Queen Elizabeth and its global standing in quick succession. For 10 days in September, the future of the monarchy dominated the newsroom. The crazy game of the English conservatives who wanted their leader to put his capsones under the benches and to ask the people to stay at home because of Corona and not to have parties seemed to think it normal that their leader could do that and lie about it too. The whole world could laugh at the blunders of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, while the British citizen seemed not to mind. In any case, they did not demand new elections and left it to the Tory members to elect the new prime minister.

In Australia Labour could note a historic federal election victory.

Economical storms

The struggle between Russia and Ukraine is also a struggle between the Putin regime and Western Europe.

The war accelerated a global economic slump, sending costs soaring, throttling energy supplies and raising the spectre of blackouts, malnutrition and a winter of discontent across dozens of countries. But we also noticed that certain companies were abusing the war in Ukraine to raise their prices.

Cereals and gas were not released enough by blockades from the Russians, which caused major food problems, especially in Africa. In Western Europe we felt our energy prices skyrocket due to the pressure on the export and import markets. In Belgium, it took forever for the government to take measures to mitigate the costs of its citizens. After several months of calls by the Labour Party PvdA/PtB to reduce VAT to 6% and by their appeals to the public to put pressure on the government, things finally came to a head.

Health matters

2022 received big leaps forward for Alzheimer’s treatments, bowel cancer prevention and understanding depression.

In several countries there was joy that people could come together again to party and that the elderly should no longer be separated from their children and grandchildren. The lockdown had made it very clear how important personal contact is. It was striking how in 2022 teenagers and twens still had many psychological difficulties, which were not resolved. Bad enough, many could not be admitted in time, causing unnecessarily too many young people to die, while this could have been avoided.

Post-pandemic in Europe in danger

For months Europe tried to combat Covid-19. We started the annual overview with the relaxation of the Corona measures. But at the end of December, they now appear to be endangered because Europe does not want to take strict measures for the Chinese who are now allowed by their government to travel outside China again, which will allow them to spread the increased disease further outside China. With the coming Chinese New Year, they could start a new pandemic as in Belgium, it started in Antwerp.

For much of the world, a sort of post-pandemic normality has resumed – with one striking exception: the country where it all began. Chinese leaders faced a rapid spread of public anger caused by their draconian Covid lockdown policy. Only after some activists could ignite a revolt against the lockdown and more people joined them on the streets, even coming to shout to get rid of the Chinese leader and communist party, the government got seriously afraid and eased the lockdown measures. After they had done that another hell broke down, the virus rapidly spreading and killing so many people the mortuaries could not handle it anymore.

While the Chinese seem to be in the first Corona wave, as it were, the rest of the world has gotten out over time and everyone is now looking forward to a shock-free 2023.

We too look forward to an ending of the war in Ukraine and to a peaceful solution between Kosovo and Serbia.

At Some View of the World and at my other personal Space, we shall try to bring you up-to-date news of the happenings in the world, and here on this website, we hope we shall still be able to offer you and share with you, some worthwhile articles to read in this coming New Year.

 

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A sincere thank you to our readers and supporters – wherever you are in the world,
we wish you a wonderful end to 2022 and an optimistic 2023.

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Additional reading

1. G7 agreed to ban or phase out Russian oil and gas imports
2. 2022 the year of fearing some wars

Streams caused by temperature differences

Andreas Kluth in The Day, a daily newspaper covering a 20-town region in eastern Connecticut, in his guest opinion piece writes about weather disasters spanning the globe this summer, looking at the many infernal fires in California and Greece, deadly floods from Germany to China, heat waves from Canada to Siberia that according to him

are really just nature’s shots across our bow.

That becomes clear if we absorb the recently published report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the United Nations that assesses the state of science on global warming. He writes:

No matter what policies we adopt − and obviously we should aim for good ones – the weather will keep getting more catastrophic more often.

A lot of people would agree with the fact that even when we are so progressed in science, there is still what we do not know.

Part of what makes the overall problem of climate change so psychologically daunting is that there’s so much we know, but so much more that we know only partially, and even more that we have yet to understand at all.

We know perfectly well, for example, how coal-fired power plants pump carbon dioxide into the air – bad. We only partially understand how the thawing permafrost could release enough methane on top of the greenhouse gases we’ve emitted to cause additional, sudden and terrifying spikes in warming – really bad. And we have yet to figure out exactly how all this would affect the earth system as a whole, and in particular the massive currents of air and water that have made the world a familiar habitat to us.

One current of particular concern is the polar jet stream, a group of winds that whips at enormous speeds around the Arctic from west to east (owing to the earth’s rotation) at a height of six-to-10 miles up in the atmosphere. Another is the Gulf Stream, a vast oceanic conveyor belt that makes warm water from the tropics flow northward on the surface until it cools and, around Iceland, sinks down and heads back south.

One thing these streams have in common, with each other and the many other currents all around the world, is that they’re caused by temperature differences between the hot tropics and the cold poles. Another thing they share is that, in their own ways, they protect or nurture us humans.

The complex swirls of the jet streams tend to blow away pressure systems that could otherwise kill us on the ground with storms and floods and heat. If these streams blow less hard, or more weirdly, or not at all, those meteorological danger domes just hover in place without moving, until they discharge their payloads on us. Although the details aren’t clear yet, scientists believe this partially explains why the floods in Germany, the heat waves in North America and forest fires in Greece and Turkey turned into such doozies.

Changes in the Gulf Stream work more slowly but are just as consequential. It’s already known that the current is at its weakest in a millennium. There are many reasons, including torrents of freshwater pouring in from melting ice and bloated rivers (freshwater is lighter than saltwater and prevents cooling water from sinking) and shrinking temperature differentials between south and north as the Artic heats up. A new study in Nature suggests that the whole Atlantic circulation and convection system may “collapse” altogether.

Read more about it: If jet or gulf streams collapse, we’re in for it

A woman throws away flood damaged rubbish July 19 in the center of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany. (Bram Janssen/AP Photo)

Flash Floods Are Proof That Climate Disaster Is Already Here

To remember:

Mary Dhonau is one of the leading flood risk experts in the UK, and says we all need to be concerned about the proliferation of so-called “super basements” in areas like Kensington and Chelsea.

“There are a lot of celebrities in those areas – Simon Cowell, Kate Garraway, Brian May – and they were all flooded,”

“A lot of them have these super basements, and when you stop and think of the earth that has been excavated to accommodate all these projects, that’s earth that would have absorbed water had it still been there.”

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We will almost certainly not avoid climate emergency now. As the Met Office puts it:

“Even if we were to stop all emissions today, we would not prevent some changes. However, the sooner we cut emissions, the smaller the changes will be.”

There is no longer time to stop the process; that ship has well and truly sailed. But there is still time to mitigate the worst of its damage.

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Perhaps the question of ‘what can we do?’ is not the right one to ask after all; a self-lacerating response engendered by a society that has gaslit us into believing that it’s our plastic straws that are to blame – rather than, you know, the 71 percent of all carbon emissions that come from just 100 companies.

“The onus is on the government to reduce emissions,”

Juliet Kinsman adds.

“That’s why they exist, to protect every member of society. We all have to think what we can do more, of course, but essentially this is on the government, private sector, and manufacturing to think of solutions.”

Matthew Neale

Credit: Twitter/Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

On the evening of the 12th of July, bookseller Lynn Gaspard received a text from her mother, concerned that their west London bookshop would flood yet again. “We were really worried,” she says over the phone, “but thinking, ‘What can we do?”

It’s a desperate question that has reverberated around the world, perhaps this month more than ever. The floods that have swept across the southeast of England in July caused significant property damage, leading to evacuations in London – on the 12th of July and, remarkably, again on Sunday – and the cancellation of Standon Calling festival.

But they are not yet comparable to the devastation in Germany and Belgium, where over 180 people were killed in flash floods, nor the horrific scenes of submerged homes in India or flooded subway train carriages in China. In the UK, many are praying that it…

View original post 44 more words

Are the European floods linked to the climate crisis?

Almost certainly. Scientists have long predicted climate disruption will lead to more extreme weather, such as heatwaves, droughts and floods. Human emissions from engine exhaust fumes, forest burning and other activities are heating the planet. As the atmosphere gets warmer it holds more moisture which brings more rain. All the places that recently experienced flooding – Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, London, Edinburgh, Tokyo and elsewhere – might have had heavy summer rain even without the climate crisis, but the deluges were unlikely to have been as intense.

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There has not yet been an attribution study for the latest floods in Europe because the analysis takes several days.

Please continue reading: What is causing the floods in Europe?

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Investigating how climate affects intense rainstorms across Europe, climate experts have shown there will be a significant future increase in the occurrence of slow-moving intense rainstorms.

The scientists estimate that these slow-moving storms may be 14 times more frequent across land by the end of the century. It is these slow-moving storms that have the potential for very high precipitation accumulations, with devastating impacts, as we saw in Germany and Belgium.

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Professor Lizzie Kendon, Science Fellow at the Met Office and Professor at Bristol University, said:

“This study shows that in addition to the intensification of rainfall with global warming, we can also expect a big increase in slow-moving storms which have the potential for high rainfall accumulations. This is very relevant to the recent flooding seen in Germany and Belgium, which highlights the devastating impacts of slow-moving storms.

“Our finding that slow-moving intense rainstorms could be 14 times more frequent by the end of the century under the high emissions RCP8.5 scenario, shows the serious impacts that we may expect across Europe if we do not curb our emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The study findings are relevant to climate mitigation and adaptation policy in Europe, with specific implications for future flooding impacts, the design of infrastructure systems, and the management of water resources.

Currently, almost stationary intense rainstorms are uncommon in Europe and happen rarely over parts of the Mediterranean Sea. Accurate predictions of future changes in intense rainfall events are key to putting effective adaptation and mitigation plans in place to limit the adverse impacts of climate change.

> Extreme Storms Will Be More Likely In Europe Research Shows

Heaving had too much rain

“A Drop Of Rain” shall not harm, but the last few weeks here in Belgium we had enough water and could witness some very major cloudbursts that caused huge water and mudflows. In 262 villages the damage was horrible. In Wallonia the clean-up shall take several weeks but now mountains of rubbish start already towering above the horizon.

Photo: Marc Gysen – Nieuwsblad

This year in several countries there is no reason at all to sing and dance in the rain.

Everyone will understand that the assistance and crisis management for one of the largest floods ever experienced in our country was and is a feat. Days (weeks) people did not get to see much help from the government, but luckily lots of citizens of this country showed to the government that this is not such a split country as many politicians want many to believe. While there appears to be a total lack of coordination, ordinary citizens have plucked up the courage to go miles away to offer help to the residents in the affected areas.

Many flood victims literally have nothing left. Only what they have on. Soon civic initiatives were launched. In several villages all over the country, there were collected warm blankets, sheets, non-perishable food, etc..

Dirt left behind by water in the July 2021 flood

In the face of this huge water disaster that has swept over Wallonia and West Germany, we have noticed a wave of great solidarity. The terrible thing also shows something very beautiful, namely the solidarity of ordinary people with their fellow man, while politicians sit around bickering and talking about setting up committees instead of rolling up their sleeves.

When there is a setback– a death, an accident, loss of job, or something of that sort – there is nothing funny. It doesn’t sound good to laugh at any of this. What looks appropriate in this condition is crying, cursing, expressing grief or all these expressions. {Finding Humour In Tragedy}

Belgium and West Germany are hit by an enormous disaster. Lots of families have lost close relatives and have seen their house and/or business seen destroyed by the strong mass of water which seemed to have had an unknown power.

It is difficult for anyone to move on without these expressions. The time taken for moving on depends on person to person and the degree of loss. Like everyone knows the bigger the loss, the more time it will take to heal. {Finding Humour In Tragedy}

But in the small details and by the many people who have come to help, several victims of this natural disaster were able to find some light in the dusk and occasionally got a smile on their face of satisfaction, that ordinary people had not abandoned them after all, as father state seemed to have done, or rather seems to be incapable of intervening with any real help.

Receiving some smile at several moments in the day of hard work getting rid of all the filthy gunk, makes saving the day. More often, crying is more near than laughing. But in these circumstances, we can see that laughing at a problem gives power and a sense of control over it. Otherwise, depression sets in and worsens the situation.

After the July flooding in Pépinster solidarity to clean-up, August 2021

Who would not be displeased and depressed to see a life’s work wiped off the map in a few minutes?

Much too often we hear voices expressing their thankfulness for those citizens from all over the country who came to help, though they also feel abandoned by the governement.

“Everything, everything, we had to do here ourselves. Where was the army? The police? Once we saw them. Then they came to save people. But they had already been rescued by family, by friends, by random people who came from everywhere. It’s fantastic, but it shouldn’t have been like this. There are also people whose job it is to help us,”

is a much-heard expression.

Wherever you go to ask in the villages where the Ourthe and the Vesdre suddenly seemed like the Amazon last week, so big, people speak highly of the volunteers. They were there as soon as they could be. They understood what was needed. They cooked, mopped, dragged, comforted. Some were young, others old. Sometimes they hardly spoke French, but Arabic, Dutch or Flemish. Everyone speaks of strangers who suddenly turned up with buckets and sponges, who cleaned whole houses from top to bottom and moved on without waiting for a ‘thank you’.

This is something “magical” and worth remembering how such a disaster brought so many people close to each other. The difficulty to cope with this situation was soothed by the helping hands. For years those traumatised people shall have to try to rebuild their life.

Not dealing with emotions or any kind of disaster will not get anyone out of that trauma. Instead, depression, anxiety and many more problems will arise in no time. {Finding Humour In Tragedy}

The coming days and months it shall be up to insurance companies and to the governments of the affected states or Länder, to do the restoration and healing work.

Wallonia is licking its wounds. Now that the water has receded everywhere, the devastation becomes clear and the living conditions for thousands of people have become very precarious.
After the drama of the floods, a second small disaster may now occur. It appears that many people are not insured, and will therefore not be able to claim financial support from the Walloon Disaster Fund. This appears to be the case in Verviers.

12 August: Cleanup Floods à Olne / Fraipont / Trooz ” grand nettoyage après les inondations ” Moirivay, 4877 Olne, Belgique

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A Pepinster des milliers d’habitants ont encore besoin d’aide
Les premiers bénévoles venus sur place nous ont dit avoir besoin de relève.
De très nombreuses personnes manquent encore de vivres pour se nourrir décemment chaque jour.

Vous pouvez faire un don, leur préparer un repas , des crêpes.
Un travail de nettoyage est encore nécessaire.

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Duizenden inwoners hebben nog steeds hulp nodig in Pepinster De eerste vrijwilligers die ter plaatse kwamen, vertelden ons dat ze hulp nodig hadden. Heel veel mensen hebben nog steeds niet het voedsel om elke dag fatsoenlijk te eten. Je kunt doneren, een maaltijd voor ze koken, pannenkoeken Een schoonmaakklus is nog steeds noodzakelijk.

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Preceding

A dangerous turning point – Earth facing the collapse of everything

Europe’s catastrophic flooding was forecast well in advance – what went so wrong?

Europe Floods: Death Toll Over 110 as Rescues Continue

Kolkende watermassa’s doorheen de straten

Faalt de overheid in aanpak van de overstromingen?

Open Discussie Zomer 2021

Overstromingen in Limburg, Duitsland en België door extreem zware buien

Toename van de kosten van extreem weer mogelijk onderschat

Solidariteit en hulpgoederen

Fraipont na de zondvloed, tussen miserie en veerkracht

De medische nood blijft hoog

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Europe’s catastrophic flooding was forecast well in advance – what went so wrong?

Almost 200 people dead and many others still missing. Billions of euros’ worth of damage. Communities devastated. Thousands of homes destroyed and their occupants traumatised.

Hannah Cloke  advises the Environment Agency, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, local and national governments and humanitarian agencies on the forecasting and warning of natural hazards. She is a Council member of the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council, a fellow of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, a fellow of the Centre for Natural Hazards & Disaster Science in Sweden and is also affiliated to Uppsala University in Sweden. Her research is funded by the UKRI Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

I am a flood forecaster who helped to set up the forecasting system that was used to predict the recent floods in Germany and surrounding countries. I saw days in advance that they were coming. I read reports of rainfall and river levels rising. And then I watched with growing horror as the death toll surged.

The European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), which I helped to set up, is part of the EU’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service. It provides early information on flooding to national and local authorities across Europe. I work closely with people there in my role as an independent flood scientist at the University of Reading to improve and analyse EFAS data. I don’t work in the team that issues early flood information to authorities, but looking at the data with colleagues, I could see early on just how serious the floods looked.

Forecasts on Friday July 9 and Saturday 10 for the Rhine catchment, covering Germany and Switzerland, had shown a high probability of flooding that would begin on Tuesday July 13. Subsequent forecasts also showed the Meuse in Belgium would be affected. The forecasts in the following days showed that there was little doubt that a major flood was coming.

EFAS sends out bulletins of early information which are designed to be read, understood and acted on by experts. They are not directly available to the public. Public flood warnings come from the national and regional weather, environment and civil protection agencies, and EFAS information needs to be used by these authorities alongside their own forecasts.

The first EFAS bulletin was sent to the relevant national authorities on Saturday July 10. More updates continued over the following days as more precise predictions became available. Formal flood notifications were issued to authorities in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg, as well as the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) of the European Commission throughout Monday and Tuesday. As the event neared and uncertainty in the forecast shrank, the predicted start of the flooding was pushed to Wednesday for smaller rivers and Thursday for the larger downstream rivers. Around 25 individual warnings were sent out to parts of the Rhine and Meuse.

The German weather service, DWD, had independently forecast extremely high rainfall too and issued warnings for more than 200 mm of rain in the same areas several days ahead of time, saying that flooding was possible. Regional warnings were also issued, for example by the Environment Agency in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, one of the areas hit particularly hard by flooding.

The floods that did happen matched the scale and distribution of those that were forecast several days before. I was very surprised, therefore, that so many people died, given that authorities knew about the event and had sufficient warnings to get people to safety before the floods began.

Where flood warnings fail

Clearly, tragically, the whole system designed to save lives by ensuring people act on warnings before floods arrive, did not work as it should have done. It may be that individual parts of the system worked exactly as they were designed, and it is certainly true that forecasts were accurate, and there were some warnings issued through official channels. In some areas, many authorities did act in time, to evacuate people, erect temporary flood defences, and move vehicles to higher ground. But this clearly did not happen everywhere.

In the middle of an election campaign, some German leaders in national and regional government still seemed to defend the locally-devolved nature of disaster management in Germany, insisting that the warnings were adequate and agencies did their work well. It is like claiming that the maiden voyage of the Titanic was a success because 99% of its engineering worked perfectly throughout. While their arguments may be true on an individual scale, unless those in power admit that the system ultimately failed, they risk failing to learn lessons and put others at risk in the future.

Science, in large part, is about helping people see the invisible. What is the use of a perfect forecast if the people it is supposed to warn cannot see the danger they are in? Effective flood warnings require people to be able to see into the future and imagine their house full of water, to assess the likelihood of that happening, and to see the multiple paths they could take to keep them, their family, and their property safe.

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Read more: Report from Europe’s flood zone: researcher calls out early warning system gridlock amid shocking loss of life

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I recently took part in an exercise encouraging scientists, from senior professors to school pupils, to trace the path of water in a river through time using just their imagination. Weeks later, we are seeing what happens when people cannot visualise the threat of a river ripping down their street, or a lake appearing in their house. These are the elements of flood warnings that must improve.

As climate change increases risks from heatwaves, fires and floods, we need to not only slash emissions but prepare ourselves for the problems we already have in store. Even with sufficient decarbonisation measures – which we are still yet to see from any major government – there is no avoiding the consequences of a hotter, more turbulent environment.

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Suggested further reading

McEwan, L., Garde-Hansen, J., Holmes, A., Jones, O. & Krause, R. (2016). Sustainable flood memories, lay knowledges and the development of community resilience to future flood risk. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42, 14 – 28. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12149.

Alexander, M., Priest, S. & Penning-Roswell, E. (2017). The risk of ill-informed reform: The future for English flood risk management. Area, 50, 426 – 429. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12393.

Forrest, S., Trell, E. & Woltjer, J. (2018). Civil society contributions to local level flood resilience: Before, during and after the 2015 Boxing Day floods in the Upper Calder Valley. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44, 422 – 436. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12279.

A dangerous turning point – Earth facing the collapse of everything

Despite so much evidence to the contrary, “experts” deny there is any threat to the world’s ecology.
Study Disputes That Earth is in a ‘Climate Emergency’

Brietbart 07-Feb-21 by Delingpole

“There is no “climate emergency”, according to a study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by independent scientist Dr Indur Goklany.
Dr Goklany concludes:

“While climate may have changed for the warmer:  Most extreme weather phenomena have not become extreme, more deadly, or more destructive.  Empirical evidence directly contradicts claims that increased carbon dioxide has reduced human wellbeing. In fact, human wellbeing has never been higher.

Whatever detrimental effects warming and higher carbon dioxide may have had on terrestrial species and ecosystems, they have been swamped by the contribution of fossil fuels to increased biological activity. This has halted, and turned around, reductions in habitat loss”.

The report would make hugely depressing reading for all environmental activists — even the Pope – if it was
infallibly accurate – which it is not!
Dr Goklany says there is little to scare us:

Yes, there will be more hot days, but fewer cold days. Oh? Where?

In the Arctic and the Antarctic of course – silly!

*There will be less tornados – #in Great Britain?
* There will be less floods, less frequent and smaller!
# Perhaps Goklany slept through last year, but there were half a dozen cyclones causing death by floods, drowning, landslides and inundation from January to December 2020 throughout the Southern Hemisphere!
*There will be less droughts and less wildfires.

# When does this begin? So far so bad in California and many parts of Australia. In October 1917 intense, deadly fires killed 41 people in Spain and Portugal, and in 2020 fires affected Sweden and Northern France as well as Italy and Spain where wildfires are not indigenous!

In 2020 for months, Siberia has been experiencing extreme heat due to a combination of persistent sunny weather and human-caused climate change. In addition to producing Arctic temperatures that cracked 100 degrees in June, the heat has fueled an enormous outbreak of wildfires, including fires on Siberia’s tundra……

Breitbart News Desk February 16, 2021:

The deep freeze that knocked out power in Texas spread across the country this week. The agency that manages power in fourteen states from Texas through Oklahoma and all the way up to North Dakota declared a state of emergency and ordered utilities to initiate rolling blackouts to cut electrical demand and stabilize the grid.
Meanwhile, a lot of fracking for oil has been brought to a halt by the freeze. Twenty percent of the U.S. oil production has gone offline, and some of the biggest refineries have been shuttered. The big problem is that the Texas oil kits are not set up for arctic weather. Up in North Dakota the extraction process is winterized, but that’s not the case farther south. Even something as simple as picking up oil in a truck to move to a refinery can become impossible when your roads are iced over, there are no snow ploughs or road salt, and no one has snow tires.
Crude oil production is down by more than four million barrels a day, twice what was reported a day earlier. Prior to the cold crisis, the U.S. was producing around 11 million barrels a day.
The Permian Basin, America’s largest oil field, has been hard hit. Production in the area that straddles western Texas and
New Mexico is down between 65 percent and 80 percent.

The melting Arctic has been watched closely by countries like China and Russia who are looking to take advantage of the increasingly available shipping lanes. But scientists have lamented the latest milestone, and are sounding the alarm about further environmental degradation due to increased shipping activity.

It is a very dangerous turning point

says Associate Professor Nengye Liu, an expert in international polar law at Macquarie University.

In Revelation 6:8-9 we can see that “Global Warming” is the result of the 4th Vial of God’s Wrath –

   8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. 9  And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

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‘Too late’:

David Attenborough warns Earth faces ‘total collapse’

Nick Whigham ·Assistant News Editor | Yahoo News| 24.2.20-21

The world’s most famous naturalist has issued a dire proclamation about the state of the planet, warning Earth is facing “the collapse of everything” if we continue on our current path.

94-year-old Sir David Attenborough warned overnight that climate change is the biggest security threat modern humans have ever faced while addressing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) session on climate, saying it was “already too late” to stem the diabolical impacts of global warming.

   “There is no going back, no matter what we do now, it’s too late to avoid climate change and the poorest, the most vulnerable, those with the least security, are now certain to suffer,”

he said.

“And if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilisation will quickly break down.”

Arthur Wright, Kallangur, Brisbane

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Related

1. Global Climate Change. Overstated or Understated?
2. Earth Is In Serious Trouble If We Don’t Make Major Changes. Period.
3. Stop the depletion of the earth
4. Earth had its coolest February since 2014
5. Climate Change Responsibility
6. The Triple Crisis: Coronavirus is increasingly linked to global warming and remaking the economy, call it a socialist trifecta
7. Sea-level rise caused by climate change> LTE Under Consideration: Re: March 1 Article, “Was climate change to blame?”
8. Scientists stunned to discover plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice
9. New Permian Methane Leakage Study Confirms What We Already Knew
10. Routine Gas Flaring Is Wasteful, Polluting and Undermeasured
11. Rare Lizard’s Habitat May Open Up
12. “Arctic air freezes Permian shale fields”… Fake news?
13. Texas Oil Giant ExxonMobil Sells Some North Sea Drilling, Exploration Sites Amid Muted Oil Prices
14. Clean Fuel Opens Door for Sustainability
15. The two gravest threats to humanity
16. 60,000 Belgians take government to court over alleged climate inaction

Here and Now

For years scientists warned politicians, but they would not listen and the citizens only thought of what was good for them at that moment, not interested to learn about the impact of their ecological and carbon footprint. No matter what happens nature shall show mankind that it is always stronger than the human being, which has to learn by falling and standing up again.

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To remember

rainfall causes problems to roads, cars, and rail travel => Movement restricted

towns + surrounding areas plagued by floods this winter.

recollection of previous winters = cold mornings with frost covered lawns + a wind that slaps your face with a chilling sting

ground not prepared as no drainage is available + waterways are not viable

foliage not resting as trees + flora remain green > earth rest less

environmental change on animal life > effects of stress, lack of sleep + tiredness

wildlife struggle to maintain their habitats

Related articles

• ‘Green News Report’ – December 8, 2015
• US Pacific Northwest’s extreme rainfall tallied by NASA’s IMERG
• Infra loss in Tuticorin estimated at Rs. 737 crore
• Rain to be ‘Force’-ful at times; ‘Star Wars’ fans may need to take cover
• Ashkelon floods: Water seeps into Barzilai Hospital
• Wisconsin is Getting a Soaking from Rare December Rainfall
• Storms lining up to bring days of rain to Bay Area
• Long Island weather: Light rain into the night
• Boreal makes strides to reduce carbon footprint
• GeoPhy Reveals Carbon Footprints of UK’s Largest Retail Centres: Equals That Of Manchester

Medicinalmeadows

My town and its surrounding areas have been plagued by floods this winter. Movement from town to town is restricted as rainfall causes problems to roads, cars, and rail travel. It seems to be raining for a season. My recollection of previous winters has been cold mornings with frost covered lawns and a wind that slaps your face with a chilling sting. If wet, lingering rain and floods are to be our depths of winter then we are certainly not prepared. The ground is not prepared as no drainage is available and waterways are not viable. The foliage is not resting as trees and flora remain green. I wonder what fauna make of all this weather? What effect is this environmental change having on the animal life?

In our current ways of living we know the effects of stress, lack of sleep and tiredness. Will the earth rest less, will wildlife struggle to maintain…

View original post 108 more words

It’s a New Year!

Now and then human being have to be reminded that material is just dust. Often it is with less pleasant experiences that we are pushed with our face in the reality of life.

It is good that at such moments of truth people dare to tell others how they feel and what they experience. Such moments of calamity should make us to think about more important things. It should remind us of our Maker and about our reason being here and how we should relate to each other and our environment.

Institute of Mental Health 10, Nov 06 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of the experiences we get in a year may be all too much. They can deliver us more worries and stress than our stress bucket can handle. That is the moment that this also will overflow – at which point we can start to experience symptoms of mental ill health. We can use coping strategies to help tap the bucket, and allow stress to flow away in a healthy and manageable way.

However, no matter how hard we try, no matter how good our coping strategies – exercise, medicines, meditation – no matter how much we avoid the things we know are bad for us – sometimes life throws in a brick and makes it impossible to avoid the inevitable splash. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

Living in this world, even with all the luxury around us certain things also for us can get too much, and our usual coping mechanisms then shall cease to be a match for our concerns, that this can lead us to develop emotional / mental health issues. Some might want to use their employees as machines, bu we are human beings not without inner feelings, and life throws things at us that we don’t always know how to deal with very well.

Sadly a lot of people may well be experiencing that overspill in the coming months –  widespread flooding across the North of the United Kingdom (and in Missouri, red.) has devastated lives, homes, businesses. People are still cleaning up, throwing out years worth of possessions and irreplaceable mementoes, wondering where on earth the money will come from to replace even the more mundane things like microwaves and kettles. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

When bad things happen in a certain region that is often also the time people are coming to know each other in an other, and hopefully in a better way.

The good news is that we have seen the most amazing evidence of the goodness of humanity – people helping eachother to clean up, everyone banding together. Volunteers travelling from near and far, donations pouring in – individuals and organisations and companies are doing a lot to ensure that things are put right as quickly as possible. I have a lot of hope that some minds have been changed, and eyes opened by the sheer generosity and kindness which has been shown by diverse communities from across the country in this little valley. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

Hopefully, that evidence of love and kinship will help people in more than just the practical ways. But in the weeks and months to come, people will start to be impacted by the trauma they have experienced. The exhaustion of the effort they have had to put in to get their homes dry, stay fed, keep themselved and their families safe – it will creep up on people and affect them in ways they may not expect. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

Some may think that such things will soon be forgotten, but they are not. Life has to go on and people will find a way to cope with it, but is shall leave its scars. It is perfectly understandable, and natural, that this will creep up on people and affect them in ways they may not expect.

Human beings have so much ignored nature around them that now nature is giving back an answer which is not so pleasant at times. 2015 may have been the warmest year since the measuring but it had its moments of heavy winds and pouring waters.

Storms have mercilessly battered Britain, one after the other over this festive period, bringing with them severe and unrelenting floods. The scale of damage and devastation was unprecedented, but it was not unpredictable. We’ve seen these storms growing with intensity every year. And, whilst a few might naively blame El Niño for this recent bout, we know that climate change is the driving factor. {UK flooding: the new normal in a changed climate}

Throughout the years we have shown our unrespectfulness and neglectfulness to mother nature that now time has come to have it respond to us on not such a friendly way either.

The harsh truth is that even if we cut all emissions today, we can’t undo what damage we’ve already done. The carbon we’ve pumped into the atmosphere will remain there for generations to come and so too will the weather it brings with it. The climate has changed, it continues to change and there’s no going back. These violent winter storms, and the floods they bring with them, are here to stay. {UK flooding: the new normal in a changed climate}

And that each rainfall will bring unease (indeed we know there is always a risk of the waters rising again – our last disaster brought two floods in one month). So it is vital that people recognise that their emotions, their mental health deserve as much care as their physical health, and that they seek help if they are struggling – in the same way they would seek help if they start to vomit / get toilet trouble that may come as a result of being in contact with the polluted flood waters. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

I think it would be particularly useful for those of us in the community who wish to support our friends and families – who perhaps know people they think might struggle to accept mental health difficulties in themselves and so not seek help when they need it. {Bricks in the stress bucket}

When the rivers retreat from historic and deadly winter flooding, leaving amid the silt a massive cleanup and recovery effort likely to take weeks if not months, people have to find a new way to continue their life.

The level of global change we’re experiencing now presents many interconnected, multi-faceted challenges that have affected and will affect different countries in different ways. It is hard to tell as a layperson what this means, but the experts have long since warned that the most severe effects in the UK would be powerful storms and increased flooding. There has been very little to suggest that the government has taken these warnings seriously, as they still seem to operate on the principle that it’s better to be sorry than safe. But they can’t keep living in denial, we are living in a different world. The Earth has warmed by one degree and it’s time we started acting like it. {UK flooding: the new normal in a changed climate}

Going into a new year lets think about all those people who are experiencing the worst things people can endure, war, floods …. and let us hope more people shall be willing to stand ready for them in need and help them to find the good things in life again.

May the good things in your life also be more lightening than your bad experiences of the year and let 2016 be a year of good health and a progression in the good direction.

God bless.

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Further readings

1. When life spills over the edge – can you help?
2. Emergency responders manage risks as river rises above flood stage
3. A Slightly Different View Of Aberdeen Beach Today…
4. St. Louis area faces big cleanup effort after flooding
5. Deluge
6. Storms and Floods
7. 2016 Start
8. Deadly floods choke operations from oil to wheat in U.S. Midwest
9. UK flooding: the new normal in a changed climate
10. The EU Water Framework Directive & The Role Played By Green NGO’s
11. The Perks of Escaping Your Mind Through Nature
12. …And, she’s back!!
13. Tired
14. 1/3-stress on stress
15. Self-Care Sunday: What’s Worked For Me
16. Happy New Year
17. Taking Stock
18. God’s Words of Comfort in Times of Fear – January 3, 2016
19. Not a bad start
20. Shit I’m Gonna Try to Accomplish This Year
21. Worry Stress: Make a Decision Now
22. Growing Young
23. Calm down.

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Related articles

• LifestyleDezine Exist To Usher In A New Kind Of Human Being
• El Niño May be Changing the Weather This Winter in California and Elsewhere
• Jennifer Lawrence Likes Being a Human Being, and a Real Hero – Back against the wall and odds…
• A 15 Year Old Girl Reminds Us: “I Am Not My Mental Illness.’
• Entitlement for Progress? Ask Gen Y HR
• Media Coverage Of Financial Crisis May Explain Why People Are Not Angrier About Economy
• Rich Robinkoff: Take Care of Each Other – How to Contribute to WordPress Without Writing Code
• Mental Health Courts Are Popular, But Are They Effective?
• Is Internet-based mental health care as effective as in-person therapy?
• Kermit Says: Step Out of the Darkness (Again)

The natural beauties of life

When we look around us we should be able to see all the beauty of nature. But many of us live in cities where we are surrounded by buildings and not much green.

The beautiful nature is given to us freely, but not many people do respect that free gift as such. We, as human beings are also not so keen to use it properly and to take into account that many after us still have to be able to enjoy as much as we did or even more. Often terrible things have to happen before we as human being want to think about what is going on or what our responsibility should be for making sure lots of people can enjoy those treasures of earth.

In many Asian countries several people are already seriously feeling the effects of the industrial revolution and the technical progress of the last two centuries. People may be happy the world advanced so much and that we do have a lot of gadgets which make life so much easier. But in many poor countries, those people do not enjoy such modern domestication? Several families by powerful storms found their riverside home destroyed already more than once. Millions have already lost more than the modest roof over their head. Millions spend their days collecting cow dung for fuel and struggling to grow vegetables in soil poisoned by saltwater. They live on borrowed time in a vast landscape of river islands, bamboo huts, heartbreaking choices and impossible hopes.

Government representatives and scientists on Tuesday March the 25th opened a five-day meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to finalize a report assessing the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, options for adaptation, and the interactions among climate changes, other stresses on societies, and opportunities for the future.

The meeting, the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of experts who have volunteered their time and expertise to produce a comprehensive assessment, was to approve the Summary for Policymakers of the second part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, checking the text line by line.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) wants to achieve a stabilization of green-house gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

All of us should be aware that limiting the effects of climate change is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication. At the same time, some mitigation efforts could undermine action on the right to promote sustainable development, and on the achievement of poverty eradication and equity. Consequently, a comprehensive assessment of climate policies involves going beyond a focus on mitigation and adaptation policies alone to examine development pathways more broadly, along with their determinants.

We all should also know that we have to take a collective action because we are speaking of problem at the global scale, because most greenhouse gases (GHGs) accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions by any agent (e.g., individual, community, company, country) affect other agents. International cooperation is therefore required to effectively mitigate GHG emissions and address other climate change issues.

Social, economic and ethical analyses may be used to inform value judgements and may take into account values of various sorts, including human well-being, cultural values and non-human values. But all people should be informed how much they themselves also can contribute to the global effect, even when their personal impact may be very small it is important that everybody does his or her own bit for the protection of the earth.

Awareness and appreciation for the environment is very important, so we should help to get others to be more conscious of the importance to safeguard the earth’s future and the future of our children their children.

We would like to present a website where the beauties of nature are nicely presented, but where one is not afraid to see behind all that beauty the danger of vanishing worlds. We have evolved far away from the snapshots that have served as surrogates, except perhaps for one surrogate which continues to grow, namely the extended reach of the body’s comprehension of the world.

Doing so more insistently than did other forms of mimetic representation, photography seemed to stand in for the direct, bodily experience of the individual, its lens becoming the roving eye of the beholder. Most obviously one sees this in travel and expeditionary photographs of the nineteenth century, for which skilled professionals travelled forth from Western Europe and the eastern USA to record and bring back views of sites as various as India, the American West and the Middle East. {Oxford Companion to the Body }

Photography, you could say, is the visual medium of this modern world, where events can be captured for the future, but were stories of the past can be a witness of the things human beings did or because they did not want to see, refusing to hear the signs have been lost for the next generations.

As a means of recording, and as an art form in its own, photography pervades our lives and shapes our perceptions…

A private photobook collector and trader, living in the Netherlands, who has sold many photobooks online (Ebay.nl, Marktplaats.nl & Boekwinkeltjes.nl/Bint) and therefore has also set up a devoted website (see http://bintphotobooks.googlepages.com/)& his Blog (see http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.com/) brings us a variety of artists worth viewing.

We do know that:

“Perception is relative and selective”…If the presenter does not clarify a message, then the receiver imposes his own meaning drawing from his/her experience, needs and expectations.

On his website we can find many beautiful photographs which clearly tell a story which has to be heard by many. Therefore we also like to introduce you to it. Our world is much to important to have it been destroyed by the greed of our consumerism.

The one looking through the lens may capture a whole story in one click and make it easy for others to see that what is behind the picture. Every photographer may put his own statement in the way he looks at things. Behind the pictures may be told also a whole story and the writer of Bint photobooks may carry us away along the threads of reality that often stay hidden for those who live in the cities of the Western world.

In Kadir van Lohuizen: Putting stories into perspective for example we can learn that the celebrated Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen feels that there are many big stories around the world that need to be told and that it is his responsibility to tell them in the right way. He brings us with his camera from the North to the South, from Greenland to Kiribati and Fiji, close to Australia, passing by Panama but also showing us the problems of cities in the United States, like Boston, all places where they feel the rising seas. On the net we also can find some other interesting photographs of professional photographers, like Mitch Zeissler, and non-professional photographers, who do have a very good eye, like Cindy Barton Knoke who is willing to share that what she encounters on her many travels. Having such people willing to share the beauties they managed to see others are allowed to enjoy them too, which is great. This way people who are not in good health or do not have the money or no means to make such trips to faraway places can receive their dreams by such bloggers.

Having lots of people living between the structures of living quarters and offices, often confronted with the fumes, dust and pollution, they may value such beautiful countrysides, animals and by Cindy Barton Knoke also beautiful art, which give richness to the world. Those living in countries with wide fields, like in the United States perhaps do not see any sign of pollution in their region, and do think perhaps everything is exaggerated, but when they can see and hear the witnesses of those who can move around, come in different places or do scientific work, they perhaps come to believe that it is really time we do something to protect what we still have. In Belgium we are confronted with pollution and climate change nearly every day, so perhaps the Belgians do feel the urge to look for solutions more than some other citizens.

Icebergs in a channel between Greenland’s Eqip Sermia glacier and Ilulissat Icefjord, the most active glacier in the Northern Hemisphere and so many other pictures Bint presents with his article on Kadir van Lohuizen is only showing us the figurative and literal top of the ice sheet melting as a result of climate change.

In 2012 van Lohuizen started project looking into consequences of sea-level rise in the world. Therefore he went to different regions that have been or will be affected quite soon by the rise and researched where people will have to relocate.

The 50-year-old photographer said he started the project after visiting a delta area in Bangladesh around three years ago, where he was struck by the apparent impact of rising sea levels and noticed that Bangladesh expects to evacuate 30 million people by 2050 due to rising sea levels.

He is also aware that the issue is more urgent than most people assume

“it’s very much knocking on our doors.”

The world has waited already too long before taking the matter seriously. Like in most places, there has to happen something serious before people do something.

“Too often we start to think about the problem when it has happened, but not before.”

Bint writes

Aiming to raise awareness in the general audience, Kadir hoped that the message would also reach politicians and policymakers.

and gives the word to van Lohuizen who says:

“It’s going to be the biggest problem of the century. It’s not just islands disappearing but also sea water seeping into the mainland, causing soil to become saline, rendering people unable to grow crops and having more difficulty accessing clean water.”

We better make sure others get to know the beauties of nature, but also show how endangered the species and our own environment is. We clearly have to share the message of the importance to keep our world in good health.

The “burning embers” diagram above was produced by the IPCC in 2001. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)