Bad humans. BAD HUMANS. What do we need to do, put a sign on Florida’s marine life saying, “Please do not touch”?
Instead of protesting against the evils of carbon pollution, many officials and environmental advocates are adopting the model of boy scouts when it comes to climate change: Be prepared.
Some are planning cities that will simply adapt to more water.
But climate-proofing a city or coastline is expensive, as shown by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $20 billion plan to build floodwalls, levees and other defenses against rising seas.
The most vulnerable places are those with the fewest resources to build such defenses, secure their water supplies or move people to higher ground. How to pay for such measures is a burning issue in U.N. climate talks, which just wrapped up a session in the German city of Bonn.
A sampling of cities around the world and what they are doing to prepare for the climatic forces that scientists say are being unleashed by global warming: READ MORE.
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Lovely library, one of my favorite places in the world.
Front page news in St. Augustine:
Neither the Bell 206 helicopter nor pilot E. Hoke Smith of SK Logistics in St. Augustine were experiencing any problems before the crash early in the morning on Dec. 26, 2011, according to the NTSB probable cause report, published late Monday.
But the helicopter was not certified to handle the sporadically misty and overcast conditions between the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and Shands Hospital at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
The board found that Smith’s decision to continue flying in the poor conditions resulted in the crash in a remote, wooded area in Clay County, killing all three men on board.
Smith did not make any backup plans for the organ transport. Other SK Logistic pilots told investigators that they would have made the same flight but would have arranged for ground transportation or a flight by a fixed-wing aircraft if they could not complete the mission as scheduled, according to the report.
“Contributing to the pilot’s improper decision was his self-induced pressure to complete the trip,” according to the report. … READ MORE.
“This fire leapt clear across two bays, hurdling at one point more than 3km of open water as if it was not even there. No one had ever seen that before.”
Snow Fall, Meet Firestorm
If you haven’t checked it out yet—and I hope you have—The Guardian’s Firestorm, a Snow Fall-esque interactive long-form multimedia piece came out last month and it’s completely stunning.
From Poynter’s story on the teamwork required to put it together:
“I think you have to capture people’s hearts,” Francesca Panetta, special projects editor of interactive storytelling projects, said in a phone interview. “As with all kinds of storytelling, you can’t lose sight of that need to connect and touch people, whether it’s writing or radio or a complicated interactive.”
Firestorm is remarkable for a number of reasons, including the stellar video images and the subtle way that looping video is used behind the written story. The integration between words and video is handled with such finesse that the one doesn’t distract from the other.
“We’re very happy with the subtlety,” Panetta said.
The chapter navigation uses clear images and concise icons and labels, ensuring it’s always clear where you are in the story.
A project like Firestorm or The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning interactive,Snow Fall, demands considerable resources. Twenty-three people are credited for Firestorm, which was three months in the making — actually a speedy turnaround for a project of this scale.
Many newsrooms don’t have that level of resources, of course. But they can still learn from The Guardian’s process and the project’s experiments with layered storytelling — and figure out ways to do something similar on a smaller scale.
Keep reading for key takeaways from the project.
FJP: I’ve been hearing people favor this one to Snow Fall but perhaps that’s because the story itself (which is incredibly moving) lends itself to a slightly more poignant interactive than Snow Fall…but both are fantastic. —Jihii
Bonus: E-book version of the story, which you can buy here, along with other Guardian shorts.
First it was Snoop — now, Warren G. Brian Williams raps the ’90s classic “Regulate” — thanks to Jimmy Fallon.
My day? Made.
Front page news in The Villages, Florida: Butterfly research! … They just used a picture of the wrong swallowtail. The story link below has the right picture.
MIAMI (AP) — The fate of an endangered butterfly species in the Florida Keys may rest on the fragile wings of a single female Schaus swallowtail and a handful of caterpillars captured in Biscayne National Park, according to University of Florida researchers hoping they have a second chance to save it from extinction.
MIAMI (AP) _ While urging coastal residents to prepare for the Atlantic hurricane season, federal officials said Friday that they were doing what they could to get ready for a storm season that includes furloughs in the agencies that forecast and respond to tropical storms.
Furloughs required by the federal budget cuts known as the sequester are expected to affect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the country’s hurricane forecasting hub in Miami, and the National Guard, which can be deployed during disasters. READ MORE.
Photograph by Steve Ruark—AP
“If something’s not photographed, it’s easy to deny,” photographer Steve Ruark says. “It’s a fact that Americans are getting killed overseas. Making people look at it makes them weigh the costs.”
Since April 2009, the Associated Press has sent a still photographer to every dignified transfer of servicemen and women killed in Iraq or Afghanistan open to the media. Most often it is freelancer Steve Ruark, who has now attended almost 500 transfers since 2009.
See the photos on LightBox here.
Full Video: “God’s Ivory”
This is the full 14-minute version of “God’s Ivory,” a film by Reportage by Getty Images that examines the illegal ivory trade and the religious devotion that fuels it. Filmmaker Andrew Hida collaborated with photographer Brent Stirton and writer Bryan Christy to elaborate on the award-winning report the pair originally made for National Geographic in 2012. See more from this feature in the latest issue of Reportage’s online magazine.
The video is also viewable on our YouTube account.
Searing, important work here. Hard to watch, but harder to ignore.
What should you take away from the annual prediction for how many tropical storms and hurricanes are expected this year?
It’s hurricane season and there will be hurricanes. Be prepared, already. It only takes one storm to screw up the rest of your year.
The annual NOAA prediction for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season isn’t a checklist, it’s not a crystal ball and, I think, it doesn’t matter all that much. What should matter: paying attention to the forecasts and storm warnings that affect you over the next six months.
Fun tropical weather fact: It’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that makes the storm season prediction each year, not the National Hurricane Center. The hurricane center focuses on the storms that actually appear, not the seasonal outlook. And if no hurricane develops, the forecasters at the hurricane center are as happy as we are.
(AP Video)
The National Hurricane Center’s efforts to improve how they communicate the danger of storm surge is front page news in Pensacola.
MIAMI (AP) — During a hurricane, storm surge is one of the greatest threats to life and land, yet many people don’t understand the dire warnings from forecasters to get out of its way. So this season, they hope to offer easy-to-understand, color-coded maps and change the way they talk to the public. (Read more …)
(AP Video)
Sometimes when we call the National Hurricane Center and ask questions about jargon in their forecasts about storm surge, they get a little huffy and start reading the forecast back to us. “No, wait, we can read it,” we say. “We just don’t understand what it means.”
It turns out that it’s not just us — it’s pretty much everyone who isn’t a hurricane specialist. Emergency managers, broadcast meteorologists, journalists and members of the general public need those forecasts to know whether to evacuate ahead of storm surge, the greatest threat to life and property in a hurricane. If they don’t understand what the hurricane center is saying about storm surge, even when the forecast is accurate, things can go very badly for the people in a hurricane’s path.
The hurricane center has caught on to the communications problem and is changing the way it talks about storm surge risks. It’s a process that began several years ago but became urgent in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.
MIAMI (AP) — During a hurricane, storm surge is one of the greatest threats to life and land, yet many people don’t understand the dire warnings from forecasters to get out of its way. So this season, they hope to offer easy-to-understand, color-coded maps and change the way they talk to the public.
Simply put, storm surge is the abnormal rise of sea water. Predicting it is far more complicated, and so is explaining it, as forecasters at the National Hurricane Center discovered, again, during a review of Superstorm Sandy.
“Scientists by their very nature use very sophisticated language, technical language,” said Jamie Rhome, leader of the hurricane center’s storm surge team. “It turns out that nobody else understands what we’re talking about. So once we figured that out, we started using more plain language.” … (read more).
A man who lost most of his face and his eyesight in last year’s face-chewing attack in Miami has a message for the people who donated to his care: Thank you.
If you want to send a message back, tag your tweets #Wishes4Poppo, and his nurses will read him the notes.
A video posted online by the hospital that has been caring for Poppo shows him sitting in a hospital bed, wearing a baseball cap and strumming a guitar.
Facing the camera, Poppo thanks the public for their contributions and support.
Miami, Florida on Flickr.
She said the tote bag and other similar fashion and decorative items made by Haitian artisans are part of her “dressing and addressing people” campaign: taking art to where the most people will buy it.
“A painting can say anything, but let’s get it out there in the world where people buy T-shirts,” Donna Karan said at the opening of a Little Haiti Cultural Center exhibition of art, accessories and furnishings produced by artisans in Haiti and sold through Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation.
It’s no charity craft fair. The items artfully displayed in the Miami gallery would sell in any mainstream home furnishings store. What sets them apart is their origin: handmade in Haiti from stone, wood, metals and textiles sourced or repurposed in the Caribbean country. … (read more)
