The UN is trying to exploit deaths caused by ongoing heavy Central American rains.
Agence France Presse reports:
More than 90 people were counted dead Tuesday from heavy rains pounding Central America after Guatemala reported more people swept away by raging floodwaters and Costa Rica found four drowned.
An estimated 700,000 people were displaced by floods and landslides following as much as 120 centimeters (47 inches) of rain in the past week in some areas — three times the monthly average this season — officials said.
In Guatemala, five more deaths were reported, including four swept away, bringing the death toll to 34 over the past week in a nation that has been hit particularly hard in 2011 by flooding and heavy rains, officials said.
The mayor of the northern Guatemala community of Mixco, Amilcar Rivera, reported the four new deaths and warned the toll may rise further.
Naturally, the the rains are being blamed on global warming:
Officials have blamed the effects of global warming for the spate of deadly rains and flooding.
“Climate change is not something that is coming in the future, we are already suffering its effects,” said Raul Artiga with the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD).
But then the AFP reported:
The United Nations considers Central America one of the world regions most affected by climate change. Over the past 40 years, natural disasters have killed some 50,000 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, according to European and Latin American studies.
It must have been great before climate change started.
I have been reading about how the tropical regions of our world receive more rainfall than most other areas for more than 50 years. Why does anyone wonder about this climate fact?
You know, if you just delete the word “Change” from all of the text above, it actually makes some since:
“Climate is not something that is coming in the future, we are already suffering its effects,” said Raul Artiga with the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD).”
and
“The United Nations considers Central America one of the world regions most affected by climate. Over the past 40 years, natural disasters have killed some 50,000 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, according to European and Latin American studies.”
So really, if you think about it, they are only one word away from stating common sense. (I am a glass-is-half-full kind of guy 🙂 )
This “unusual situation” which indeed kills non-stop everybody everywhere is no more unusual than the sun rising every day – it is properly called, “Lots of rain fell, vast areas were flooded and because our country is far too poor to afford flood-reduction strategies, many people could not escape and were drowned.”
Additionally, since very few reliable records even go back more than 200 years, you can call every flooding event resulting in loss of life and property, “unusual” since, by definition and lack of records, you cannot properly define what “usual” is…
No one here is mocking the dead – we mock the living idiots instead.
The climate is always changing. Could it be due to the Earth’s natural wobble on it’s axis? The natural climate is always extreme somewhere on earth.
You should write responsibly about these topics, especially if you have not been affected by them. The fact that you have not experienced the death of anyone related to you due to rains that have been ongoing for over a week does not mean that these facts have been made up. There is such a thing as climate variability and that happens all the time, but this is a most unusual situation. Please don’t use the death of innocent people as jokes.
1,250 deaths per year. Far less than auto accidents. Central Americans are far better adapting to man-contrived climate change.
No doubt omitting all those saved by warmer winters.
Hasn’t all weather always been caused by climate change?