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Thought of the Day…Submitted by: Cher Murphy…02/25/26

Austin Tang — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:45:48 +0000

“RAIN IS FROZEN WATER, TOUCHING MOTHER EARTH.” -Reverend Paul Sladkus, All Faiths & Spiritual. Join us www.pausetheworldforpeace.org for Earth Day in Times Square, April 22, 2026.

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The impact of climate change on the economy

Austin Tang — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:29:51 +0000

Listen to “The impact of climate change on the economy” on Spreaker.

Climate change is no longer just about the environment; it is costing us money. As the planet warms, extreme weather events like storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires are becoming more common and destructive. These disasters damage homes, roads, and businesses, leading to huge repair bills. Insurance costs are rising as well. With more claims after climate related disasters, insurers increase premiums, making it more expensive for families and businesses to stay protected. Climate change disrupts trade. In 2022, severe drought in Europe made major rivers too shallow for cargo ships, delaying deliveries of fuel and other goods and slowing economic activity across several countries. Moving to renewable energy such as wind, solar, and hydro can create jobs, attract investment, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Choosing clean energy is not only good for the planet but also a smart economic strategy.

#ClimateChange

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He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water

Austin Tang — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 19:29:01 +0000

A landscape architect in China has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change.

Kongjian Yu at his office in Beijing. “We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said.Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Richard Schiffman
Published March 28, 2024
Updated April 3, 2024

Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway systems and inundating residential neighborhoods, often with deadly consequences.

Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University, is developing what might seem like a counterintuitive response: Let the water in.

“You cannot fight water,” he said. “You have to adapt to it.”

Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing water, Mr. Yu wants to dissipate the destructive force of floodwaters by slowing them and giving them room to spread out.

Mr. Yu calls the concept “sponge city” and says it’s like “doing tai chi with water,” a reference to the Chinese martial art in which an opponent’s energy and moves are redirected, not resisted.

“It’s a whole philosophy, a new way of dealing with water,” he said.

Through his Beijing-based company, Turenscape, one of the world’s largest landscape architecture firms, Mr. Yu has overseen the development of hundreds of landscaped urban water parks in China where runoff from flash floods is diverted to soak into the ground or be absorbed into constructed wetlands.

Mr. Yu said growing up in a village in Zhejiang Province toward the end of the Cultural Revolution showed him how earlier generations in rural China had “made friends with water.” Farmers in his region built terraces, berms and ponds to direct and to store excess water during the rainy season.

That stood in sharp contrast to the urban landscapes in modern China. Traditionally, cities in China would set aside areas capable of absorbing floodwaters. But such nature-friendly urban design largely ended with the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Yu said. More recently, millions of acres have been paved over to build cities, some of them rising up virtually overnight.

Shanghai Houtan Park in 2006.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The same area in 2018.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

“We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said, noting that much of China has a monsoon climate subject to extremely heavy bursts of rain that pose an increasing hazard as climate change advances. That’s because warm air can hold more moisture, resulting in heavier rainstorms.

Currently, 65 percent of urban areas in China experience some degree of flooding each year, according to Mr. Yu. The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. The United States is the largest historical emitter .

“The concrete drainage systems that came here from the West just can’t handle it,” Mr. Yu said. “We need a new solution.”

The sponge city program was formally inaugurated by President Xi Jinping in 2015 with pilot projects in 16 Chinese cities and has since expanded to more than 640 sites in 250 municipalities around the country.

You can see the concept in Houtan Park, a mile-long strip of greenery along the Huangpu River in Shanghai that Mr. Yu designed on a former industrial site.

Terraces planted with bamboo and native forbs and grasses are bisected by wooden walkways that zigzag between ponds and constructed wetlands. The wetlands filter water, slow the river’s flow and provide habitat for waterfowl and spawning fish.

The goal, at least on paper, is that by 2030, 70 percent of the rain that falls on China’s sponge cities during extreme weather events should be absorbed locally rather than accumulate in the streets.

Whether enough land can be converted is a key question.

Mr. Yu, who studied landscape architecture in China and at Harvard, with hand-drawn landscape designs. Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Edmund Penning-Rowsell, a research associate at the University of Oxford who focuses on water security, said the scale of the sponge city projects would have to be huge to cope with flooding on their own. “Take New York City,” he said. “How many Central Parks would you need to absorb this kind of problem? You’d probably need half of Manhattan.”

Zhengzhou, in northeastern China on the banks of the Yellow River, was an enthusiastic early adopter of the sponge city concept, spending hundreds of millions of dollars building related projects from 2016 to 2021. But torrential rains inundated much of the city in July 2021, creating scenes of destruction and killing hundreds, including at least 14 in a subway tunnel.

Why were the floods so disastrous in Zhengzhou? Mr. Yu said some of the money earmarked for sponge projects was diverted to other programs and that the land set aside for them was insufficient. If permeable surfaces or green spaces make up 20 to 40 percent of a city’s area, he said, “you can virtually solve the problem of urban inundation.”

Niall Kirkwood, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard who has known Mr. Yu for years, acknowledged that it can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to convert land in city centers that have already been densely built. Still, he said, Mr. Yu’s impact as a innovator has been incalculable.

“He’s created a clear and elegant idea of enhancing nature, of partnership with nature that everyone, the man on the street, the mayor of a city, an engineer, even a child, can understand,” Professor Kirkwood said.

Where large tracts of land are not available, sponge city projects are replacing concrete and asphalt with permeable pavement, installing green roofs and creating trenches called bioswales that channel storm-water runoff and use vegetation to filter out debris and pollution.

The sponge city concept is not unique to China. One of Mr. Yu’s projects abroad is the Benjakitti Forest Park, a maze of ponds, trees and miniature islands in Bangkok that was opened to the public in 2022 and occupies more than hundred acres on the site of a former tobacco factory.

Separately, in 2007 the Dutch government began a program called Room for the River that consists of more than 30 projects around four rivers, including the Rhine. The idea is to restore natural floodplains in key areas around sites that need protection. The Danish capital, Copenhagen, is using “floodable parks” that turn into temporary ponds during heavy rains. Philadelphia and Malmo, Sweden, also have projects.

The site of Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok in 2020.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The park, which was rehabilitated by Mr. Yu’s firm, in 2022.Credit…Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times

In addition to flood control, these projects have the advantage of being an inexpensive way to recharge local aquifers and a low-tech adaptation to help overheated city neighborhoods, because evaporating water has a cooling effect.

John Beardsley, the curator of the Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, which was awarded to Mr. Yu last year, echoed Professor Kirkwood, saying Mr. Yu’s impact on policy in China, a country that has been more likely to imprison environmental activists than take their messages to heart, has been astonishing.

Mr. Beardsley attributes this to Mr. Yu’s adroit political skills and infectious enthusiasm, as well as the Chinese government’s powerful incentive to appear to be addressing the problem of urban flooding, which has grown alarmingly in recent years.

“Kongjian has managed to be very critical of the government’s environmental policies while still maintaining his practice and his academic appointments,” he said. “He’s both brave and deft in this regard, threading a very narrow needle.”

“Sponge cities isn’t a total solution, but it makes a significant impact,” Mr. Beardsley said. “I mean, we need to start doing something.”

Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

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DEVASTATING FLOODING SUMMER HURRICANES, EXTREME HEAT, WILDFIRES AND STORMS LOOM AS SOLDIERS IN THE U.S. ARMY STEP UP TO SUPPORT COMMUNITIES IN NEED

Austin Tang — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 15:29:26 +0000

Listen to “DEVASTATING FLOODING SUMMER HURRICANES, EXTREME HEAT, WILDFIRES AND STORMS LOOM AS SOLDIERS IN THE U.S. ARMY STEP UP TO SUPPORT COMMUNITIES” on Spreaker.

https://www.goarmy.com/
Another grueling severe weather season is upon us. Wildfires are expected to burn through millions of acres of land as Western states struggle with drought, while tornadoes, hurricanes, and violent storms are forecasted in other parts of the country.

Along with federal emergency agencies, the U.S. Army, with its combat readiness and organizational mobility, responds rapidly to natural and manmade disaster situations at national, state, and local levels.

U.S. Army North (ARNORTH) supports the Department of Defense’s response efforts during wildland fire and hurricane season by deploying on short notice into perilous environments to respond quickly and effectively to protect lives, property, critical infrastructure, and natural and cultural resources.

Did You Know?
 The annual hurricane season in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico runs 1 June through 30 November, but fire is now a year-round threat, and the number and severity of wildland fires has increased.
 The U.S. military has been an important partner in wildfire suppression since the early 1900s when Army Soldiers served as firefighters in Western U.S.
 2021 was the 40th time that federal military ground forces have been mobilized to support wildland firefighting response efforts.
 Whereas most Army missions involve deploying overseas, ARNORTH is unique in its commitment to serving in the homeland helping protect people, property, and federal lands.

Since 2005, ARNORTH has responded to more than 40 storms including Hurricanes Katrina and Maria and several fire disasters including the 2021 Dixie Fire in California. On August 18th, join MAJ Wesley Todd and 2LT Lane Harwell as they discuss the role of the U.S. Army in disaster relief efforts including wildland fires, hurricanes, and more. Also learn about how Soldiers can serve their country and local communities in times of challenging weather events.

Interview is courtesy: U.S. Army

#hurricanes #flooding #heat #wildfires #storms #soldiers #usarmy #support #weather #land #drought #tornadoes #federal #emergency #naturaldisaster #missions #response #community

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Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.

Austin Tang — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:29:44 +0000

Samuel Taylor Coleridget ext of 1834
Submitted by Shelley Silver

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Some modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it is often considered a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest’s reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner’s story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

The poem begins with an old grey-bearded sailor, the Mariner, stopping a guest at a wedding ceremony to tell him a story of a sailing voyage he took long ago. The Wedding-Guest is at first reluctant to listen, as the ceremony is about to begin, but the mariner’s glittering eye captivates him.

The mariner’s tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches the icy waters of the Antarctic. An albatross appears and leads the ship out of the ice jam where it is stuck, but even as the albatross is fed and praised by the ship’s crew, the mariner shoots the bird:

for more info, go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner#:~:text=The%20Rime%20of%20the%20Ancient%20Mariner%20(originally%20The%20Rime%20of,1817%20that%20featured%20a%20gloss

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Argument

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
PART I
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

for more info, go to https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834

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Video & Podcast – DON’T LEAVE HURRICANE PREP,

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 12:29:29 +0000

http://goodnewsplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/project_hurricane_1.mp3
Video & Podcast – DON’T LEAVE HURRICANE PREP,
IN HANDS OF OTHERS

Hurricanes can be extremely unpredictable, as can be the recovery from the storms. Months have passed since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, and nearly 200,000 families and businesses — 16% of the island — remain without power.

It is incumbent upon those living in areas at highest risk of being impacted by hurricanes to take storm preparations into their own hands. Taking small steps before the storm hits and knocks out your power can save a lot of headaches and heartache when it’s too late. Being prepared can reduce fear, anxiety, and losses that accompany disasters.

Some important tips include stockpiling enough emergency supplies to last you, your loved ones and your pets for at least three days. The emergency kits should include bottled water, non-perishable food, prescription drugs you are taking, emergency radio and a DIY phone charger.

Experts also advice to keep handy changes of underwear, comfortable shoes and clean wool socks.

Our guest who will be available to discuss emergency planning methods will be Mark McGinnis, an authority in forensic meteorology and an expert in weather hazard planning and weather analysis. His depth of experience in weather preparedness as it relates to increasing safety and reducing associated losses is highly relevant to both home owners as well as local businesses.

Mark will provide tips on how to best prepare yourself for the coming hurricane season and avoid the troubles that can accompany these storms.

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Lightning!

editor — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 18:38:05 +0000

Lightning

Lightning is an atmospheric electrical discharge (spark) accompanied by thunder, usually associated with and produced by cumulonimbus clouds, but also occurring during volcanic eruptions or in dust storms.[1] From this discharge of atmospheric electricity, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures of about 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites, which are normally hollow and can extend as much as several meters into the ground.[2][3]

There are some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year. Lightning causes ionisation in the air through which it travels, leading to the formation of nitric oxide and ultimately, nitric acid, of benefit to plant life below.

Lightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.

How lightning initially forms is still a matter of debate. Scientists have studied root causes ranging from atmospheric perturbations (wind, humidity, friction, and atmospheric pressure) to the impact of solar wind and accumulation of charged solar particles. Ice inside a cloud is thought to be a key element in lightning development, and may cause a forcible separation of positive and negative charges within the cloud, thus assisting in the formation of lightning.

The irrational fear of lightning (and thunder) is astraphobia. The study or science of lightning is called fulminology, and someone who studies lightning is referred to as a fulminologist.

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