Natural Disasters in a Global Environment E-Book

Anthony N. Penna

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 601

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Natural Disasters in a Global Environment is a transnational, global and environmental history of natural and man-made disasters. Detailed case studies of past and present events are presented in a historical narrative, making use of the most recent scholarship.

• Examines a range of disasters including volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, landslides, hurricanes, famines, and more
• Highlights the role of science in studying natural disasters and describes the mechanisms responsible for them
• Features a range of case studies which can be used in conjunction with one another or as standalone examples
• Covers scientific material in a lucid and accessible style suited to  undergraduate students or those outside of scientific disciplines
• Traces the transition of our understanding of disasters, from religious and superstitious explanations to contemporary scientific accounts

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise for Natural Disasters in a Global Environment

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

List of figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

Map

Timeline

Introduction

Part 1: Internal Processes

Chapter 1: Supervolcanoes

Introduction

The Mt. Toba Eruption (73,000 BP)

The Thera (Santorini) Eruption in the Aegean Sea (1600 BCE)

Mt. Tambora (1815) and Krakatau (1883)

The Mt. Pinatubo Eruption (1991)

A Threatening Future Scenario

Summary

Chapter 2: Earthquakes

Introduction

The San Francisco Earthquake (1906)

The Great Kanto Earthquake (1923)

The Haitian Earthquake (2010)

Summary

Chapter 3: Tsunamis

Introduction

Lisbon, Portugal: The Quadruple Disaster (1755)

The Lituya Bay Mega-Tsunami (1958)

The Sumatra–Andaman Earthquake (2004)

The Tōhoku (Japan) Tsunami (2011)

Summary

Part 2: Surficial Processes

Chapter 4: Fire

Introduction

The Burning of Rome (68 CE)

The Great Fire of London (1666)

The Chicago and Peshtigo Fires (1871)

Summary

Chapter 5: Floods

Introduction

Central China Floods (1931)

The Dutch Flood Disaster (1953)

The Bangladesh Floods (1997–98)

Summary

Chapter 6: Landslides

Introduction

The Turtle Mountain Landslide, Canada (1903)

The Aberfan Landslide, Wales (1966)

The Ancash Earthquake and Landslide, Peru (1970)

The Southern Leyte Landslide, the Philippines (2006)

Summary

Chapter 7: Pandemic Diseases

Introduction

The Bubonic Plague (1347–51 and After)

The Great Influenza Pandemic (1918–20)

HIV/AIDS (1985–)

Summary

Part 3: Atmospheric Processes

Chapter 8: Hurricanes, Cyclones, and Typhoons

Introduction

The Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys (1935)

The Bhola Cyclone (1970)

Super-Typhoon Nina (1975)

Summary

Chapter 9: Famines and Droughts

Introduction

The Irish Potato Famine (1845–51)

The “Dust Bowl” Drought in the American West (1930–40)

The Great Leap Forward Chinese Famine (1958–61)

Summary

Chapter 10: Meteorite Impacts

Introduction

The Creation of Earth’s Moon and the Origins of Meteorites

The Yucatán Chicxulub Crater, Mexico (65 MYA)

The Clovis Extinction (12,500–12,900 BP)

The Tunguska (Siberia) Event (1908)

Investigating Future Impacts

Summary

Epilogue

Index

Praise for Natural Disasters in a Global Environment

“Natural Disasters in a Global Environment serves as a much-needed respite from the glossy hyper-produced texts on environmental geology and natural disasters so prevalent today. Instead, Penna and Rivers couple delightful exposition, insightful comparative images, and historical anecdotes that together produce some of the finest science writing I’ve seen. This book not only could be an outstanding text for a course on the subject, but it also would be a fine read for anyone interested in how Earth ‘works.’ ”

Donald Siegel, Syracuse University

“This is an impressive collection, wide ranging in time, place and discipline. The result stimulates new thinking both about history and about the ongoing role of catastrophe in the course of human society – altogether, an imaginative venture.”

Peter Stearns, George Mason University

“Eco-anxiety sometimes makes us exaggerate our power over nature for good and ill. In an important, welcome and riveting collaboration between history and science, Penna and Rivers unfold a minatory drama of disasters – seismic, climatic, pandemic, atmospheric, meteoric – that humans can barely influence, let alone control.”

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, University of Notre Dame

“This skillful record of natural disaster – in climate, epidemics, and earth tremors – shows how society risks further disaster even in planning for safety.”

Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh

“Appealing to both students of history and science, this study of natural hazards and vulnerable populations provides an enthralling guide to how disasters have altered the course of human history.”

Greg Bankoff, University of Hull

“Interdisciplinary in methods and reach, Natural Disasters in a Global Environment surveys big ideas in concise and accessible form. This book is an indispensable introduction for everyone who wants to understand human response to disaster – scientists, disaster planners, historians, and policy-makers, students and senior researchers.”

Conevery Bolton Valencius, University of Massachusetts, Boston

This edition first published 2013

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing.

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Anthony N. Penna and Jennifer S. Rivers to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penna, Anthony N.

 Natural disasters in a global environment / Anthony N. Penna and Jennifer S. Rivers.

pages cm

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-118-25234-5 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-118-25233-8 (paperback) – ISBN 978-1-118-32752-4 (emobi) 1. Natural disasters–History. 2. Environmental disasters–History. 3. Natural disasters–Environmental aspects. I. Rivers, Jennifer S. II. Title.

 GB5014.P46 2013

 363.3409–dc23

2012043158

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Anthony dedicates this book to the children in his blended family: Christina, Matthew, Olan, Trevor, Laura, Greg, and Brandon.

Jennifer dedicates this book to her father, Michael D. Rivers, who wanted to name her Aberfan as a memorial to the children who died in the Welsh landslide.

List of figures

Map

Timeline

Figure 0.1 Trends in natural disasters.

Figure 1.1 The Toba supervolcano compared to other supervolcanic events.

Figure 1.2 Caldera created by the supervolcanic eruption of Santorini.

Figure 1.3 The ash and pumice cloud caused by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

Figure 2.1 Horses killed during the San Francisco earthquake by falling bricks.

Figure 2.2 Death and destruction caused by the Great Kanto earthquake.

Figure 2.3 Haiti’s vulnerability on the Caribbean tectonic plates.

Figure 3.1 The Lisbon tsunami, earthquake, and fire.

Figure 3.2 Street in downtown Banda Aceh after the 2004 tsunami.

Figure 3.3 Aerial view of the flooding and fire caused by the Japanese tsunami.

Figure 4.1 Map of Rome during the time of Emperor Nero.

Figure 4.2 The Great Fire of London (1666).

Figure 4.3 Map outlining the Peshtigo and Chicago fires of 1871.

Figure 5.1 The Central China floods of 1931.

Figure 5.2 Flood conditions in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2007.

Figure 6.1 The Aberfan disaster rescue effort.

Figure 6.2 The landslide memorial in Yungay, Peru.

Figure 6.3 US Marines and sailors digging for survivors after the Leyte Island landslide in the Philippines.

Figure 7.1 Map highlighting the spread of the Black Death in Eurasia, 1347–51.

Figure 7.2 Emergency hospital in Funston, Kansas, USA, during the Great Influenza Pandemic in 1918.

Figure 7.3 World map showing people living with AIDS.

Figure 8.1 Relief train derailed at Islamorada by the 1935 hurricane.

Figure 8.2 Map showing the direction of the Bhola cyclone, 1970.

Figure 8.3 Outline of China’s provinces affected by Typhoon Nina.

Figure 9.1 Famine memorial, Dublin, Ireland.

Figure 9.2 Dust Bowl, Dallas, South Dakota, in 1936.

Figure 9.3 The Great Leap Forward famine: backyard furnaces.

Figure 10.1 The Yucatán Chicxulub crater.

Figure 10.2 Fallen trees caused by the Tunguska event.

Figure 10.3 Apophis passing Earth.

The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Preface

This book came about as a logical merging of our two disciplines, history and environmental science. Professor Penna taught environmental history both for history majors and as a requirement for environmental studies majors for many years. His interest in the subject of natural disasters came from two sources. First, he was invited to write three short essays for a volume titled American Disasters edited by his colleague in history, Ballard Campbell. The three essays were titled: “The 1935 Hurricane in the Florida Keys,” “The Great Hurricane of 1938,” and “The Mississippi Flood of 1927.” These essays piqued his interest in the larger subject of natural disasters and his awareness that the subject of natural disasters and their environmental impact was becoming a topic of renewed interest by historians, social scientists, and the larger scientific community. Second, Hurricane Katrina exposed the vulnerability of citizens caught in this storm, and highlighted the failure of the immediate response by local, state, and national agencies. This event, more than any other, suggested to him that it would be worthwhile examining the subject from a historical point of view, yet with a solid scientific underpinning

Professor Rivers serves as Director of the Environmental Studies program at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. She teaches a variety of undergraduate courses including Natural Disasters and Catastrophes and Environmental Science in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, both for science majors and for the larger university community. Chief among her interests as an environmental scientist is the role global climate change may have on disasters, including increasing both the severity and the frequency of atmospheric disasters as well as potentially increasing the severity and frequency of submarine earthquakes and tsunamis. In her very popular Disasters course she uses many case studies detailed in this book, such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1755 Lisbon tsunami as a frame of reference by which to enable students to discuss engineering, city infrastructure, early warning, and emergency response mechanisms.

Thus, we were a logical pairing. Professors Penna and Rivers met for the first time in the spring of 2009 to discuss the possibility of writing this book. A series of meetings ensued, in which we developed a broad outline for the book based on the major categories of disasters which would become chapter titles, with three or more case studies that had societal implications beyond the immediate events. Based on the available historical and scientific material, we attempted to cut a wide path across geological and historical time frames. We sought uniformity for each chapter, but discovered that the scientific material specific to the older case studies we wished to use simply did not exist. As a result, we selected many cases from more recent nineteenth- and twentieth-century history.

Acknowledgments

At each step during the research and writing of this book, a number of students from the environmental studies program compiled preliminary bibliographies and articles from science and history journals. They included Mollie Stone, Alyssa Pandolfi, Ali Tarbous, Caroline Malcolm, and Jessica Feldish. Liam Madden made the imperial and metric systems consistent throughout the manuscript, and compiled a list of further readings for each chapter. Haley Oller and Lana Penn concentrated on photographic research, with Lana designing and revising a number of maps. Haley created an index for the manuscript that made the task of completing one for the page proofs much less onerous. A number of our students focused on a single task over the course of a semester, while others worked during the entire academic year.

Special thanks go to Karl Geiger, a retired engineer and Professor Penna’s partner for almost twenty years at Habitat for Humanity, Boston, building low-income housing. They spent days discussing the structure and content of the manuscript. Karl scrutinized each chapter for scientific and technological accuracy and provided us with extensive commentary. Without his involvement, many errors would have made their way into the text. The few that may remain are ours only. Tom Detreth and Paul Goffer, two physicians who traveled with Professor Penna through Botswana and Zambia in August 2010, provided much-needed commentary on Chapter 7, Pandemic Diseases. Professor Penna’s wife, Channing Penna, read the chapters with great interest and provided a loving home life that made this seemingly unending project worthwhile.

In order to identify reviewers of the pre-publication manuscript, the editorial staff asked us to provide names of scholars whose interests and research activity coincided with ours. Special thanks go to Joel A. Tarr, John R. McNeill, Pat Manning, Heather Streets-Salter, John Brooke, Ted Steinberg, Ken Hewitt, Ben Wisner, Mary Jane Maxwell, Paulette Peckol, Donald Siegel, and Robert Schmidt for identifying possible reviewers. To those anonymous readers, we owe special thanks for pointing out omissions, errors, and dubious interpretations. Peter Coveney, executive editor, guided this project with great skill and enthusiasm from the proposal writing stage to the manuscript’s completion and publication. In the UK, Joanna Pyke, Caroline Hensman, and Jane Hammett provided much needed management, photographic research, and editing support, respectively.

Thanks to Deborah White for reading, reviewing, and editing the chapters on meteorites and tsunamis. Ryan Hill, senior technician in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University, gave much appreciated technical support as we edited the manuscript and produced the images you see in this book.

Dr. Rivers would like to thank Anthony N. Penna for the honor of working together and for becoming a dear friend. Dr. Rivers gives special thanks to her sister, Julie A. Rivers, and her mother, Sally Rivers, for their boundless love and support. Thank you to Peter Rosen, Robert E. Schmidt, Paulette M. Peckol, and Donald I. Siegel for being mentors and friends.

Introduction

It reminded me of something that tsunami survivors mentioned in the first days after the waves receded. Up and down the battered coast, they had rediscovered gnarled stone tablets, some of them hundreds of years old, which had been left by ancient ancestors at precise points on the shore to indicate the high-water marks of previous tsunamis. The inscriptions implored future generations never to build closer to the water again. “No matter how many years may pass,” read one, “do not forget this warning.”

(Evan Osnos, “Letter from Fukushima: the fallout”)1

Natural disasters have the ability to seriously disrupt the functioning of society. They pose significant and widespread threats to life, property, and the environment. They are caused by accidents, nature, or human activities.2 Though we have improved our disaster warning, response, and recovery systems, our engineered structures and effective emergency management and responses may have lulled us into a false sense of security. As we saw with the 2011 tsunami in Japan referenced in the above quote, people were standing on top of their “indestructible” sea walls as the tsunami waves came in, only to be washed out to sea, along with the rubble from sea walls, boats, and coastal housing.

Background

To examine natural disasters comparatively and across historical time involves focusing on macro forces. One of the most significant macro forces in the last century has been the four-fold increase in the human population. In 2012, the world’s population exceeded seven billion people. With 500,000,000 living in proximity to the world’s coastal regions and with increasing numbers moving there, they become more vulnerable to coastal flooding caused by sea-level rise and hurricane storm surges. In addition, another one-half billion people live within a 60-mi (100 km) radius of volcanoes that have been active during the last thousand years. There, sub-surface volcanic eruptions along the boundaries of the world’s tectonic plates cause calamitous tsunamis.

Populations moving to coastal communities for work or play become more vulnerable to catastrophic events, including oceanic earthquakes that cause tsunamis and hurricanes that cause storm surge and coastal and inland flooding. For example, the land in the Bengali Delta sinks at a rate of one inch each year. Human action rather than natural processes is causing this land subsidence: “Surge and subsidence make a bad combination.”3 The 3.5 million people who live in and around the Delta extract millions of gallons of groundwater each year for household use and for irrigation, causing this sinking. In the rest of the country, land clearing and deforestation expands the nation’s agricultural footprint, making it vulnerable to flooding from the major river systems that flow through the nation. This combination resulted in the devastation caused by the Bhola cyclone (a case study in Chapter 8), which was one of the most destructive natural disasters of the last century, with at least 300,000 casualties.

A population’s poor becomes increasingly vulnerable because either no alternative living arrangements exist, as in the case in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or due to a false impression that engineered structures create safe havens atop unstable geologic substrate. Increasingly, people occupy regions vulnerable to earthquakes. The affluent knowingly move there for the amenities; a view, a woodlands, or a lake. In the event of a quake, they rebuild or go on to a safer haven. For the poor and more vulnerable, no such options exist. This trend, along with the decline in the capacity of ecosystems to provide a buffer to extreme events, has led to lost lives with rapidly rising economic losses from natural disasters.4

Probably the most common human action contributing to losses from disasters is the decision to fill wetlands, marshes, and mudflats along the world’s coasts to create land for more affluent populations seeking the amenities of coastal living. They may not be aware of the consequences of their actions and as a result create their own vulnerability. By enlarging their geographical footprint, they fill wetlands with debris to accommodate larger populations, commerce, and industry. In so doing, many coastal cities and communities place their citizens in harm’s way. In cities close to or on top of tectonic plates, such as San Francisco and Tokyo, earthquakes have been amplified by manmade land, filled with sediment and debris. Less dramatic but equally destructive effects of filling coastal wetlands include blocked drainage, compromised sanitation systems, the spread of infectious pathogens, and a declining population of fish and marine life which local people may depend on.5 So, a number of factors contribute to “natural” and “human” disasters, with the most important ones related to a country’s social system and its power structure. Although geophysical and biological events may trigger a disaster, we have attempted to place them into a complex framework of social, political, and economic environments.

In writing this book, we made a number of multidisciplinary connections. On the spread of pandemic diseases, Chapter 7 provides examples of disasters that were capable of changing the direction of world history. Environmental conditions, such as poor sanitation, contaminated drinking water, and poor hygiene, contributed to their outbreaks. For example, during the Bubonic Plague, infected fleas looking for blood hosts found rats first and then infected humans. Two of our case studies reinforce this conclusion. Many biologists and historians agree on the effects of Justinian’s Plague (541–750 CE), with some suggesting that it may have been responsible, or partly so, for the end of the Ancient World and the beginning of Europe’s Medieval Period.

Others note that the “Black Death” (1347–1351 CE) may be among the primary reasons for the demise of the Medieval and the beginning of the European Renaissance that ushered in the modern age. These may be defining episodes in world history, rather than dramatic isolated events. If this is correct, then we all need to re-evaluate the significance of natural disasters in past global and environmental history as major societal turning points. In all cases, people without access to medical or public health knowledge became vulnerable to rapidly spreading pathogens. In the past, there were no safeguards and certainly no ways to manage the risks. Running away from infected people, without knowledge of the disease vectors, spread the affliction.

According to environmental geographer Vaclav Smil, some of the disasters noted above fall into the category of sudden, unpredictable low-probability events.6 The case studies of five supervolcanoes (Chapter 1) fall into this category. They were the Mt. Toba (Sumatra) super-eruption (73,000 years ago), the Thera (Santorini) super-eruption (circa 1,660 years before the common era; BCE), the Mt. Tambora (1815), Krakatau (1883), and Mt Pinatubo (1991) eruptions. One of the fascinating hypotheses suggests that the eruption of Mt. Toba explains the bottleneck found by geneticists as they mapped humanity’s DNA (see Chapter 1). Santorini’s explosions, according to some researchers, precipitated the decline of Minoan civilization in the Aegean Sea. In cases with such far-reaching outcomes, Smil’s categorizing seems warranted.

Sudden high-probability disasters that occur more frequently than others include floods and cyclones. That cyclones, floods, and landslides top the high-probability list is predictable given the advances in global communication and reporting and, more importantly, the development of the science of climate change during the last decades. As the world’s oceans warm, more water evaporates. The increased moisture in the atmosphere causes frequent torrential rainfall. Sudden flooding follows this surface and atmospheric exchange. Figure 0.1 details the rapid increase in these high-probability floods compared to the increase in cyclones and earthquakes in recent decades.

Figure 0.1 Trends in natural disasters.

Source: Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/trends-in-natural-disasters_a899. Used by permission Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal.

In the first years of the twenty-first century, storms and floods accounted for 70–75% of all natural disasters, with earthquakes, tsunamis, temperature extremes, fires, and blizzards following in terms of frequency. However, between 1970 and 2005 earthquakes and resultant tsunamis claimed the largest number of victims (over one million people) followed by cyclones and floods (approximately 550,000 people). Each year one single catastrophic event accounts for the majority of the fatalities. In 2003 and 2005, earthquakes in Iran and Kashmir (disputed land separating Pakistan and India) accounted for 80% and 85% of the year’s total fatalities, respectively. The Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami were responsible for 95% of 2004’s fatalities.7 These “sudden discontinuities” (volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and droughts), all topics in this volume, occur less frequently. What the future holds regarding the incidence of these events remains a topic of discussion based on projections about climatic conditions, enhanced reporting of events across the world, and disaster risk management. To avoid compartmentalizing natural disasters into discrete categories, repeated efforts to link them in meaningful ways has become a priority. One of the more dramatic examples of this linkage can be seen in the eighteenth-century drawing (Figure 3.1) of the Lisbon earthquake (1755) that destroyed the city, causing uncontrollable fires and a tsunami. Two recent disasters, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake (2004) in the Sumatra Straits and the Japanese earthquake (2011) off the country’s east coast, triggered two of the modern world’s most destructive tsunamis.

Responses to Hazards and Disasters

Questions abound about individual and collective responses to geological, atmospheric, and biological processes. What caused these episodes? What were their effects? What constitutes their depth and breadth? How many died? Which government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) initiated relief and rescue missions, and how successful were they? Did a rebuilding effort create a safer environment, or did it replicate the previous built environment? How did society contribute to the disaster? What did society make of it? How did society confront it or even use it?8

For example, did the Bhola cyclone (1971) create the conditions for the creation of a new nation state, Bangladesh? Did the Great Kanto earthquake (1923) thwart Japan’s liberalization and set the stage for renewed militarism? In the wake of San Francisco’s earthquake (1906), city promoters vigorously promoted the reconstruction of the city as a viable location for future investments. They downplayed the earthquake as a sudden and unpredictable event and emphasized the city’s ability to rebuild itself after the earthquake-generated fires. Fires became prominent in advertising material; they were predictable and containable, earthquakes were sudden and terrifying. A city at risk for another ‘big one” was not a place that would attract investment, so they underplayed the earthquake’s significance.

The Global and Environmental Basis for this Book

We use the words “global” and “environment” to connect global environmental history with environmental studies and environmental science. In doing so, we examine the geological, ecological, political, economic, and cultural effects of natural disasters. As the world becomes more interconnected and as scholars and more informed citizens focus on efforts to protect the natural world, history provides the vehicle for understanding these developments over long periods of time.

For global history, the publication of Fernand Braudel’s Civilization matererielle, economie et capitalisme, XVe–XVIIe siècle (1979) became such a work. A number of scholars followed by examining the interconnections of material life and the environment. Later global histories focused on economic transnational linkages. Andre Gunder Frank9 and Kenneth Pomerantz10 brought to our attention economic developments in Asia during the last centuries. ReOrient and The Great Divergence by these scholars, respectively, extended our knowledge of global developments. As of the time of writing, the resurgence of China and other Asian countries in the twenty-first century can now be viewed within the historical perspective of many centuries, with the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century being periods of decline in Asia.

For environmental history, again a relatively new field, the seminal works include Alfred W. Crosby Jr.’s The Columbian Exchange11 and Ecological Imperialism.12 The title of the former has entered the lexicon of history to such an extent that it is now used without reference to Crosby’s earlier work. In both studies, Crosby defined humans as biological entities interacting with the rest of nature. Both books transcend local and national boundaries, as does J.R. McNeill’s Something New Under The Sun13 and, with William McNeill, The Human Web.14 David Christian’s Maps of Time15 views history through the lens of many disciplines and stretches both global and environmental history into the realm of “big history.” To accomplish the merger of the global and environmental more effectively, we have connected environmental science and history. By doing so, we believe that our book becomes diverse, comparative, international, and historical.

The Emergence of Climate Science and its Relationship to Natural Disasters

The marriage of global and environmental history to environmental science breaks through a barrier erected by many modern historians who until recently did not incorporate natural disasters into their studies of political and cultural history. This was especially the case with studies written from the perspective of the national state. This separation of natural disasters from mainstream history “represents a stunning reversal from the sensibilities of pre-modern historians, to whom natural disasters were among the primary markers of chronological change.”16 Over the last decade, however, the number of scholarly books on natural disasters, recognizing their importance for historical and social scientific study, has grown markedly. Many reasons explain this growth but one stands out.

For the first time in recorded history, humans have become geological agents able to alter the global climate system, which in some instances can cause unpredictable sudden natural disasters. In a recent article, titled “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” University of Chicago historian Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that the impact of humans, defined by Alfred W. Crosby as biological, has been extended to the geological realm.17 Climate change casts in bold relief humanity’s vulnerability to volatile weather systems.

Chakrabarty’s conclusions draw on the growing body of research findings by climate scientists. As a historian of science, Naomi Oreskes pointed out in her review of the abstracts of 928 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 that none refuted the growing body of research “over the reality of human-induced climate change.”18 As recently as 2010, William Anderegg conducted another meta-analysis of more recent studies that reaffirm her findings.19 In November 2012, a leading climate-change skeptic, University of California at Berkeley’s Professor Richard Muller changed his opposition to climate change projections and wrote, “[I] found that global land temperatures have increased by a remarkable 1°C (1.8°F) in just 60 years.”20 As the meta-analyses of these climate studies and Professor Muller’s conclusions suggest, the separation of human history from natural history represents a false dichotomy.

Currently, scientists focus their research increasingly on efforts to connect the findings about anthropogenic climate change to the increase in natural disasters; for example, the probability that the 4% increase in atmospheric moisture caused by melting glaciers is a primary reason for recurrent torrential rainfall and devastating floods. Events such as these occurred in places that experienced them once in a century or once in a decade, but not on a yearly basis. Increased floods, landslides, and cyclones have become side-effects of a warming climate.

Studying slowly developing and sudden natural disasters strengthens the relationship between the natural sciences and history. Both require the use of specific meteorological, atmospheric, and geological knowledge, but not to the exclusion of knowledge from other disciplines including biology, anthropology, and human genetics – all of which are familiar terrain for historians and scientists.

Each chapter in this book contains case studies based on the available scientific and historical knowledge. We discuss disasters that have their origin in Earth’s sub-surface (e.g. volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis; Chapters 1–3), surface (e.g. floods, landslides, fires, and pandemic diseases; Chapters 4–7), and atmosphere (e.g. droughts and famines, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, and meteor strikes; Chapters 8–10).

Conclusion

Drawing from this range of disciplines and the three categories listed above, situating natural disasters in the context of cultures at risk seems appropriate. Learning about natural disasters in the context of specific cultures will allow readers to examine how humans faced calamities and attempted to protect themselves from their worst effects. The historical record provides many examples of humanity’s resilience when facing catastrophes; and, at the same time, its vulnerability.

We have written a scientific and historical narrative based on a global and comparative examination of case studies. In doing so, we hope to prepare ourselves for an uncertain future. Mitigating natural disasters should become our collective goal, and protecting the environment is clearly the means to achieve this end. The following phrase, “Go green, be fair, and keep safe”21 can summarize three of the means to achieve this end. “Going green” means that we make every effort to minimize our exposure to natural hazards. Here, we have described briefly the hazards of moving to coastal regions. Many more hazards will become apparent as you read further. “Being fair” means that we do not victimize already vulnerable populations by our actions, and that we acknowledge that they suffer most during and after natural disasters. They will need our assistance. Lastly, “keep safe” means assessing and managing risk by imposing high standards for the built environment. That means clear and enforceable construction codes for homes, levees, dams, and many other human structures.

If we elevate the status of natural disasters and reverse the historical trend of neglect, then they will neither be erased from memory nor relegated to sidebars and parentheses. Although the historical record provides many examples of efforts to erase or distort the memory of natural and manmade disasters (e.g. the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the influenza pandemic of 1918), a number of case studies will demonstrate humanity’s desire to honor those who lost their lives during and in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophes (see sections on the Irish Famine of 1851, the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and the Yungay landslide in Peru in 1970).

Notes

1Evan Osnos (2011), “Letter from Fukushima: the fallout,” The New Yorker, October 17, 48.

2UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, “Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction.” At http://www.adrc.asia/publications/terminology/top.htm.

3Robert R.M. Verchick (2010), Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 29.

4Vaclav Smil (2008), Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 46.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7Karen Sudmeier-Rieux, Hillary Masundire, Ali Rizvi, et al., eds. (2006), Ecosystems, Livelihoods and Disasters: An Integrated Approach to Disaster Risk Management (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN Press), 31.

8Robert R.M. Verchick (2010), Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World, 3.

9Andre Gunder Frank (1998), ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

10Kenneth Pomerantz (2011), The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

11Alfred W. Crosby, Jr. (2003), The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th anniversary edition (Westport, CT: Praeger).

12Alfred W. Crosby, Jr. (1986), Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).

13J.R. McNeill (2001), Something New Under The Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton Publishing).

14J.R. McNeill and William McNeill (2003), The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of World History (New York: W.W. Norton Publishing).

15David Christian (2005), Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

16Vaclav Smil (2008), Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, 56.

17Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses” At http://pcc.hypotheses.org/files/2012/03/Chakrabarty_2009.pdf.

18Naomi Oreskes (2007), “The scientific consensus on climate change: how do we know we’re not wrong?” in Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren, eds. Joseph F.C. Dimento and Pamela Doughman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 73–74.

19William R.L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, et al. (2010), “Expert credibility in climate change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107(27), 12, 107–109.

20Richard Muller (2011), “Dr. Muller’s Findings,” The New York Times, November 4, A30.

21Robert R.M. Verchick (2010), Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World, 29.

Part 1

Internal Processes

Chapter 1

Supervolcanoes

All of a sudden there came a great noise. We saw a great black thing, a long way off, coming towards us. It was very high and very strong, and we soon saw that it was water . . . The people began to . . . run for their lives . . . There was a general rush to climb up in one particular place . . . You can see the marks on the hillside where the fight for life took place. Some . . . dragged others down with them.

(A description of the eruption of Krakatau by a Javanese field hand, working 5 mi (8 km) inland on Monday, August 28, 1883 at 10:30 a.m.)1

Introduction

As a recent volcanic eruption demonstrated, air travel – a convenient, speedy, and affordable means of modern transportation – was brought to a standstill by the explosive emissions from Mt. Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland from which a tephra plume (consisting of ash, dust, and solid rock) reached 5.6 mi (9 km) into the stratosphere in April 2010. At no time since the end of World War II had air traffic in the northern hemisphere experienced such a disruption. Although this particular eruption was short-lived, others, which were of a longer duration, changed the global climate.

During the last 46,000 years, major eruptions have occurred on average of one every 80 years. Some volcanoes have erupted for several consecutive years and multiple times in a single year. They discharged millions of cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere. As these eruptions continued, sulfur dioxide (SO), the most active chemical agent emitted by volcanoes, combined with large quantities of emitted water vapor (HO) and oxidized into sulfuric acid (HSO) aerosols. These aerosols spread around the world, reflecting the sun’s radiation and causing a decrease in global temperatures. So, an initial warming of the climate system caused by a volcanic eruption was soon followed by a cooling.