Al Gore & The Myanmar Cyclone Disaster

As I am sure you have all heard, the Asian nation of Myanmar (Burma) was recently struck by devastating Cyclone Nargis (same thing as a hurricane, just a different name). The last estimates I heard for a death toll were over 100,000. This is truly a horrendous situation compounded by a military regime that is dragging its feet allowing foreign aid to come in.

The focus of today's blog, however, is Al Gore's claim that this was the effect of Global Warming. Since he uses hurricanes as a tell-tale sign of Global Warming, it is no surprise that he saw this disaster as a perfect opportunity to gain some more steam for his own cause.

I am not going into all the details as to why Global Warming in general is false or why Al Gore should actually practice what he preaches, or the threat to our liberties eco-nuts like Obama (who said he would have Gore in his Cabinet) would enact. Instead, I am just going to focus on this storm and what made it so disastrous. Were I to focus on the other things, I would spend days here and what I would end up posting would be an online-book, not a blog!

First, some geography: Myanmar is located in Southeast Asia along the Bay of Bengal. On the map below, I have highlighted Myanmar in orange and put the approximate track Nargis took with a red arrow. Click on the image to make it bigger.


The track of Nargis is the key factor. First, winds around cyclones, like hurricanes, turn counter-clockwise. That means as Nargis approached land, the winds were blowing from the south, namely directly on shore. The winds at land fall were at or near 120 mph. The winds of hurricanes and cyclones are so strong they effectively push the ocean water on shore. This is called the Storm Surge So, with 120mph winds blowing directly perpendicular to shore, the water had no where to go but on shore.

This particular storm surge was I about 12 feet. That means, the ocean raised about 12 feet above its normal levels. Now, the area effected by this storm surge is a river delta. This means there are many rivers to flood as the larger river splits into numerous channels that empty into the sea.

Furthermore, Southern Myanmar is flat and barely above sea-level. Even nearly 200 miles inland is less than 100 feet above sea-level. This only makes the storm surge worse. Since there is such little change in elevation, there is nothing to prevent the storm surge from plowing further inland.

Even worse is the fact that the most populated part of Myanmar is in the south. The capital city of Yangon (Rangoon) is situated along one of the deltas on the southern coast. Most of the city is below 20 feet in elevation.

The last factor that made this storm such a disaster was the government of Myanmar. They gave their people very little to no warning this storm was coming. The citizens had no time to prepare; their infrastructure was very poor and, living at such a low elevation allowed the ocean to literally come in and engulf their towns and cities.

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with "global warming." To pick out one storm and say it is proof of climate change is folly. One cannot determine the condition of the climate based on one storm, or even one year's worth of storms. Furthermore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has even said there is no link between "global warming" and hurricanes.

All Gore is trying to do here is capitalize off of this horrendous tragedy. If he succeeds, in the end it will be his pockets that get lined with the profits of carbon off-sets and the likes. If Gore really cares about helping save people's lives, I had better be reading headlines about how he is donating millions upon millions to help the victims of this catastrophe. Of course, that has about as much a chance of happening as most of his doomsday global warming scenarios.

Links:
Here are some better maps, as well as some chilling satellite pictures from NASA:
Accuweather.com Jesse Ferrell's May 6th Blog Entry