Evening Standard: The natural hazards threatening our lives
Britain was swept by a tidal wave of headlines yesterday predicting that we will be devastated by - a giant tidal wave. Are the inspirers of these stories serious scientists or publicity-seeking alarmists? By David Rowan
IF YOU'VE read this far, the huge tidal wave that will flatten Britain has, mercifully, spared us for another day. But don't relax too much: according to headlines yesterday, the 'mega-tsunami' due to hit us from the Canary Islands will get us sooner or later, destroying everything in its 500mph path.
According to scientists at University College London, there's no question that the tidal wave will wreak devastation - it's simply a matter of when. That's if one of the 1,000 or so kilometre-wide asteroids heading towards Earth doesn't bump into us first.
The same group of scientists has also been busy warning that just one impact they're watching for it now - will kill a couple of billion of us. There's a '100 per cent certainty' that we're facing such a collision, they insist, so prepare now for the ensuing 'cosmic winter'. These may sound like silly-season scare stories, but the predictions come from an expert team at UCL with a rather good track record at predicting natural disasters. From deep within Gower Street they foresaw not only Mount Etna's eruption this summer, but that the lava flows would be between 5km and 8km long (spot on: the Italians measured 6.5km).
In May 2000, they predicted the numbers of tropical storms and typhoons that would strike the next season in the Pacific (25 storms and 14 typhoons, just as they'd said); they forecast the numbers of storms that would hit Australia; they even mastered that most uncertain of meteorological skills, the ability to estimate the average spring temperature in England. They said it would be 8.6C; it came in at 8.5C.
But it's the group's more open-ended predictions - the disasters they insist will eventually hit us, even if we have to wait centuries or millenniums - that generate the headlines. Each time the scientists warn afresh of volcanic super-eruptions or threats from space, the phones at UCL keep ringing with media requests, from the tabloids to the Today programme.
Is this just another example of academics talking up unprovable dangers to draw attention to themselves? 'Absolutely not,' says an indignant Professor Bill McGuire, who runs the group, known as the Benfield Greig Hazards Research Centre. 'We don't need to raise our profile. It's just that you can't keep quiet about things like asteroid impacts. They're going to get us sooner or later - so what's the point of putting your head in the sand and keeping quiet?'
Professor McGuire, a genial 46-year-old, insists he isn't trying to scare us: rather, he wants governments and aid agencies to plan for the worst. Ten years ago, he says, he was mocked for his asteroid warnings, but today the Government has set up a task force to study the threat, and opened a monitoring station in Wales. 'We're relatively safe from volcanoes and earthquakes in Britain, but some geophysical events will affect everyone on the planet,' he says. 'The UK doesn't store more than a month's food supply.
What happens when volcanic super-eruption far away leaves us facing five years living in pitch black and freezing?' It will, he says, be like surviving a nuclear war without the radiation: the last one probably left just 40 or so humans alive. But there is a big difference between these mega-threats - due to hit at some indeterminate time - and the centre's main work: predicting the more short-term hazards of hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. So sharp have the department's 20 or so academics become at predicting short-term natural disasters that now governments, insurers and aid agencies are listening.
In the short term, for instance, they predict that England will enjoy drier autumns for a couple of years, with no repeat of last year's floods. This will be followed by unusually hot spells and water shortages brought on by drought. If you're sailing into the Atlantic next season, season, watch out for tropical storms - there will be 12, to be precise, of which seven will reach hurricane force. That's safer than the Pacific, which will face 18 typhoons while Australia will be pounded by six severe cyclones before April.
How do they know? The answers lie in an unglamorous open-plan war room tucked away in the geological sciences department of UCL. From here - and a sister campus outside Guildford members of the Benfield Greig centre monitor satellite data and run computer models to identify where trouble is brewing. Set up four years ago at the insurance industry's behest sponsors Benfield Greig are the world's third-largest reinsurance broker - they are busy predicting volcanic eruptions, tropical storms and earthquakes, as well as helping on the ground when the worst happens.
In the past year Bill McGuire has lectured in New Zealand on volcanoes, told Greek civil servants how to cope with disasters, visited the Bhuj earthquake site in India, and studied how California is monitoring threats from space.
Not that Professor McGuire and his colleagues are pessimists: to the geologists, vulcanologists, meteorologists and 'disaster managers' attached to his department plus another 25 or so elsewhere - they're simply number-crunching on computers to predict the future. Take their latest success, predicting the exact size of the Mount Etna eruption in Sicily, and the fact that lava flows would not reach the town of Nicolosi. Under deputy director Dr Chris Kilburn, just back from Etna, they spent years monitoring tiny movements in the volcano's surface, caused by rocks snapping as fresh magma rose.
Satellite data sent to London showed swellings on the ground as small as a centimetre - enough for them to see the trouble ahead. Long before the locals knew, they warned the Italian government that Etna's southern flank was going to give. Similarly, the team can spot an increased chance of earthquakes - if not their timing - by detecting radon gas, released when rocks start to crack. Experts also look for eccentric behaviour among cattle and fish although no one understands the link.
Let's hope it helps. Tokyo is expecting the big one any day now, and certainly, Professor McGuire believes, within the next 20 or 30 years. 'Insurers try to put it to the back of their minds,' he says. The last major earthquake, in 1923, left 200,000 dead and caused damage worth Dollars 50 billion in today's money.
Although Kobe suffered a Dollars 200 billion quake in 1995, Tokyo has been quiet since 1923. But today, with four different faults 'ready to go', the experts say there is 'no question' that the ground will open under Tokyo some time soon. When it happens, the ensuing global economic meltdown will get us all.
'The Japanese have faith that they'll pick up the precursor signs, but that's pure fantasy,' Professor McGuire warns. 'The quake will devastate the Japanese economy, and they'll have to disinvest worldwide to rebuild Tokyo. Imagine if it happened now, with the world on the edge of recession.'
MEANWHILE, there are always enough workaday natural disasters to keep the insurers busy. Each year for the past decade, they have dealt with $2 billion in damage caused by winter storms hitting Europe. Even poor old Royal Leamington Spa, hit by floods in April 1998, faced a £350 million bill.
But it's hurricanes that reliably cause trouble year after year: in the US, the annual damage averages $5 billion. At UCL's Surrey campus, in a hilltop retreat near Holmbury St Mary, the Benfield Greig centre's meteorological chief, Dr Mark Saunders, predicts the coming season's hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. Displayed along the office walls - as Jordan or Melinda might be in a car repair shop - are posters charting the chaos brought by the department's pinup disasters: Hurricane Hugo, Storm Lothar, Windstorm Vivian ... 'I like them all,' confides Dr Saunders, a quietly spoken man who does not immediately appear a match for a 125mph storm. 'I've no particular favourite.'
The experts use satellites to measure sea temperatures and wind speeds. Data is fed into computers to forecast extreme weather up to a year in advance. The latest news is that it's going to be a bad year in the Atlantic, expecting a fifth more hurricanes than usual.
Insurers need the information to set premiums. Power companies need to know if storms will bring down cables. Cruise liners need to plan routes that avoid typhoons. And shops need to know what clothes to stock.
'We're even starting to link extreme weather to health in the UK,' Dr Saunders says. 'We've found that colder, less wet weather is linked to a higher incidence of flu.'
While he's convinced that global warming is already having an effect on the British climate - '15 of the last 16 warmest years have occurred since 1980' - Dr Saunders warns against blaming it for every flood or drought. 'All the hysteria linking last autumn's floods to climate change was wrong,' he says.
Back at Gower Street, the rest of the Benfield Greig team are facing their own crisis. 'The roof 'S caved in,' Bill McGuire exclaims - a hazard the centre notably failed to predict. But the problem only momentarily distracts him from the bigger picture - the huge natural disasters that governments are failing to prepare for.
'These global geophysical events are real,' he says. 'They're going to happen, and are not necessarily a long way in the future.
Maybe a thousand years away - or maybe tomorrow. 'Though,' he admits, 'I don't lie awake thinking about it.'
[PANEL]
Just when you thought it was safe to stay on Earth ...
Giant waves
The problem: Huge landslides at sea, after earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, cause enormous fasttravelling waves that hit faraway coastlines with the energy of an atomic bomb. In 100 years 50,000 people have died in 400 tsunami.
The solution: If unstable volcanoes and earthquake zones are monitored, advance warnings might be made about potential tsunami. But will governments on the other side of the world move people inland in time?
The risk: The threat is growing in mountainous areas, partly because of global warming. The next big tsunami will probably start at the Canary Islands, flattening Britain's Atlantic coastline for miles inland. Huge waves will also engulf the eastern US and Caribbean. 'There might be a million dead,' says professor McGuire. 'You won't want to be in the Bahamas at the time.'
Asteroid impact
The problem: Scientists estimate that 1,000 asteroids wider than 1km are threatening the Earth's orbit. So far they have identified only 300 to 400. If we're hit, we're in big trouble: the impact will kick up cosmic dust and trigger a 'cosmic winter' which could last for years. A quarter of the world's population could starve.
The solution: Any large asteroid heading towards Earth must be identified years in advance, as the only hope is deflecting its path (shooting at it would be futile). One plan involves attaching a solarpowered motor to the asteroid to alter its course. The theory remains untested.
The risk: A collision is expected only once every 100,000 years - although the last such impact was 900,000 years ago, so we're running late. 'Statistically you're 750 times more likely to be killed in an impact event than you are of winning the Lottery,' says professor McGuire.
Global meltdown
The problem: Tokyo is well overdue an earthquake. When it comes, as geologists expect within 20 years, it will consume the city in a firestorm.
The solution: Relocate the population away from an earthquake zone, or at least remove Tokyo's million or so wooden buildings. Neither option is likely to be adopted.
The risk: Certain. Potential damage has been estimated at Dollars 7 trillion, and Japan will have to withdraw all its investments from the rest of the world to rebuild. Result: global economic collapse.
Volcanic eruptions
The problem: The most powerful volcanic eruptions, known as super-eruptions, bring disaster far beyond their source. The last one, in Indonesia around 74,000 years ago, ejected 3,000 cubic km of ash enough to bury an area from Slough to Basildon under a 2km-deep blanket. The debris spread across the planet, reducing temperatures by five or six degrees, and came close to wiping out the human race.
The solution: The most likely cause of mass death will be starvation, as no new food will be grown. The best we can do is to stock up.
The risk: There have been three super-eruptions at Yellowstone in Wyoming, and the volcano is still active, although a fresh build-up would take several years. 'We expect two super-eruptions every 100,000 years. It wouldn't be a surprise if one happened tomorrow,' says Professor McGuire.
(Evening Standard, August 31 2001)
IF YOU'VE read this far, the huge tidal wave that will flatten Britain has, mercifully, spared us for another day. But don't relax too much: according to headlines yesterday, the 'mega-tsunami' due to hit us from the Canary Islands will get us sooner or later, destroying everything in its 500mph path.
According to scientists at University College London, there's no question that the tidal wave will wreak devastation - it's simply a matter of when. That's if one of the 1,000 or so kilometre-wide asteroids heading towards Earth doesn't bump into us first.
The same group of scientists has also been busy warning that just one impact they're watching for it now - will kill a couple of billion of us. There's a '100 per cent certainty' that we're facing such a collision, they insist, so prepare now for the ensuing 'cosmic winter'. These may sound like silly-season scare stories, but the predictions come from an expert team at UCL with a rather good track record at predicting natural disasters. From deep within Gower Street they foresaw not only Mount Etna's eruption this summer, but that the lava flows would be between 5km and 8km long (spot on: the Italians measured 6.5km).
In May 2000, they predicted the numbers of tropical storms and typhoons that would strike the next season in the Pacific (25 storms and 14 typhoons, just as they'd said); they forecast the numbers of storms that would hit Australia; they even mastered that most uncertain of meteorological skills, the ability to estimate the average spring temperature in England. They said it would be 8.6C; it came in at 8.5C.
But it's the group's more open-ended predictions - the disasters they insist will eventually hit us, even if we have to wait centuries or millenniums - that generate the headlines. Each time the scientists warn afresh of volcanic super-eruptions or threats from space, the phones at UCL keep ringing with media requests, from the tabloids to the Today programme.
Is this just another example of academics talking up unprovable dangers to draw attention to themselves? 'Absolutely not,' says an indignant Professor Bill McGuire, who runs the group, known as the Benfield Greig Hazards Research Centre. 'We don't need to raise our profile. It's just that you can't keep quiet about things like asteroid impacts. They're going to get us sooner or later - so what's the point of putting your head in the sand and keeping quiet?'
Professor McGuire, a genial 46-year-old, insists he isn't trying to scare us: rather, he wants governments and aid agencies to plan for the worst. Ten years ago, he says, he was mocked for his asteroid warnings, but today the Government has set up a task force to study the threat, and opened a monitoring station in Wales. 'We're relatively safe from volcanoes and earthquakes in Britain, but some geophysical events will affect everyone on the planet,' he says. 'The UK doesn't store more than a month's food supply.
What happens when volcanic super-eruption far away leaves us facing five years living in pitch black and freezing?' It will, he says, be like surviving a nuclear war without the radiation: the last one probably left just 40 or so humans alive. But there is a big difference between these mega-threats - due to hit at some indeterminate time - and the centre's main work: predicting the more short-term hazards of hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. So sharp have the department's 20 or so academics become at predicting short-term natural disasters that now governments, insurers and aid agencies are listening.
In the short term, for instance, they predict that England will enjoy drier autumns for a couple of years, with no repeat of last year's floods. This will be followed by unusually hot spells and water shortages brought on by drought. If you're sailing into the Atlantic next season, season, watch out for tropical storms - there will be 12, to be precise, of which seven will reach hurricane force. That's safer than the Pacific, which will face 18 typhoons while Australia will be pounded by six severe cyclones before April.
How do they know? The answers lie in an unglamorous open-plan war room tucked away in the geological sciences department of UCL. From here - and a sister campus outside Guildford members of the Benfield Greig centre monitor satellite data and run computer models to identify where trouble is brewing. Set up four years ago at the insurance industry's behest sponsors Benfield Greig are the world's third-largest reinsurance broker - they are busy predicting volcanic eruptions, tropical storms and earthquakes, as well as helping on the ground when the worst happens.
In the past year Bill McGuire has lectured in New Zealand on volcanoes, told Greek civil servants how to cope with disasters, visited the Bhuj earthquake site in India, and studied how California is monitoring threats from space.
Not that Professor McGuire and his colleagues are pessimists: to the geologists, vulcanologists, meteorologists and 'disaster managers' attached to his department plus another 25 or so elsewhere - they're simply number-crunching on computers to predict the future. Take their latest success, predicting the exact size of the Mount Etna eruption in Sicily, and the fact that lava flows would not reach the town of Nicolosi. Under deputy director Dr Chris Kilburn, just back from Etna, they spent years monitoring tiny movements in the volcano's surface, caused by rocks snapping as fresh magma rose.
Satellite data sent to London showed swellings on the ground as small as a centimetre - enough for them to see the trouble ahead. Long before the locals knew, they warned the Italian government that Etna's southern flank was going to give. Similarly, the team can spot an increased chance of earthquakes - if not their timing - by detecting radon gas, released when rocks start to crack. Experts also look for eccentric behaviour among cattle and fish although no one understands the link.
Let's hope it helps. Tokyo is expecting the big one any day now, and certainly, Professor McGuire believes, within the next 20 or 30 years. 'Insurers try to put it to the back of their minds,' he says. The last major earthquake, in 1923, left 200,000 dead and caused damage worth Dollars 50 billion in today's money.
Although Kobe suffered a Dollars 200 billion quake in 1995, Tokyo has been quiet since 1923. But today, with four different faults 'ready to go', the experts say there is 'no question' that the ground will open under Tokyo some time soon. When it happens, the ensuing global economic meltdown will get us all.
'The Japanese have faith that they'll pick up the precursor signs, but that's pure fantasy,' Professor McGuire warns. 'The quake will devastate the Japanese economy, and they'll have to disinvest worldwide to rebuild Tokyo. Imagine if it happened now, with the world on the edge of recession.'
MEANWHILE, there are always enough workaday natural disasters to keep the insurers busy. Each year for the past decade, they have dealt with $2 billion in damage caused by winter storms hitting Europe. Even poor old Royal Leamington Spa, hit by floods in April 1998, faced a £350 million bill.
But it's hurricanes that reliably cause trouble year after year: in the US, the annual damage averages $5 billion. At UCL's Surrey campus, in a hilltop retreat near Holmbury St Mary, the Benfield Greig centre's meteorological chief, Dr Mark Saunders, predicts the coming season's hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. Displayed along the office walls - as Jordan or Melinda might be in a car repair shop - are posters charting the chaos brought by the department's pinup disasters: Hurricane Hugo, Storm Lothar, Windstorm Vivian ... 'I like them all,' confides Dr Saunders, a quietly spoken man who does not immediately appear a match for a 125mph storm. 'I've no particular favourite.'
The experts use satellites to measure sea temperatures and wind speeds. Data is fed into computers to forecast extreme weather up to a year in advance. The latest news is that it's going to be a bad year in the Atlantic, expecting a fifth more hurricanes than usual.
Insurers need the information to set premiums. Power companies need to know if storms will bring down cables. Cruise liners need to plan routes that avoid typhoons. And shops need to know what clothes to stock.
'We're even starting to link extreme weather to health in the UK,' Dr Saunders says. 'We've found that colder, less wet weather is linked to a higher incidence of flu.'
While he's convinced that global warming is already having an effect on the British climate - '15 of the last 16 warmest years have occurred since 1980' - Dr Saunders warns against blaming it for every flood or drought. 'All the hysteria linking last autumn's floods to climate change was wrong,' he says.
Back at Gower Street, the rest of the Benfield Greig team are facing their own crisis. 'The roof 'S caved in,' Bill McGuire exclaims - a hazard the centre notably failed to predict. But the problem only momentarily distracts him from the bigger picture - the huge natural disasters that governments are failing to prepare for.
'These global geophysical events are real,' he says. 'They're going to happen, and are not necessarily a long way in the future.
Maybe a thousand years away - or maybe tomorrow. 'Though,' he admits, 'I don't lie awake thinking about it.'
[PANEL]
Just when you thought it was safe to stay on Earth ...
Giant waves
The problem: Huge landslides at sea, after earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, cause enormous fasttravelling waves that hit faraway coastlines with the energy of an atomic bomb. In 100 years 50,000 people have died in 400 tsunami.
The solution: If unstable volcanoes and earthquake zones are monitored, advance warnings might be made about potential tsunami. But will governments on the other side of the world move people inland in time?
The risk: The threat is growing in mountainous areas, partly because of global warming. The next big tsunami will probably start at the Canary Islands, flattening Britain's Atlantic coastline for miles inland. Huge waves will also engulf the eastern US and Caribbean. 'There might be a million dead,' says professor McGuire. 'You won't want to be in the Bahamas at the time.'
Asteroid impact
The problem: Scientists estimate that 1,000 asteroids wider than 1km are threatening the Earth's orbit. So far they have identified only 300 to 400. If we're hit, we're in big trouble: the impact will kick up cosmic dust and trigger a 'cosmic winter' which could last for years. A quarter of the world's population could starve.
The solution: Any large asteroid heading towards Earth must be identified years in advance, as the only hope is deflecting its path (shooting at it would be futile). One plan involves attaching a solarpowered motor to the asteroid to alter its course. The theory remains untested.
The risk: A collision is expected only once every 100,000 years - although the last such impact was 900,000 years ago, so we're running late. 'Statistically you're 750 times more likely to be killed in an impact event than you are of winning the Lottery,' says professor McGuire.
Global meltdown
The problem: Tokyo is well overdue an earthquake. When it comes, as geologists expect within 20 years, it will consume the city in a firestorm.
The solution: Relocate the population away from an earthquake zone, or at least remove Tokyo's million or so wooden buildings. Neither option is likely to be adopted.
The risk: Certain. Potential damage has been estimated at Dollars 7 trillion, and Japan will have to withdraw all its investments from the rest of the world to rebuild. Result: global economic collapse.
Volcanic eruptions
The problem: The most powerful volcanic eruptions, known as super-eruptions, bring disaster far beyond their source. The last one, in Indonesia around 74,000 years ago, ejected 3,000 cubic km of ash enough to bury an area from Slough to Basildon under a 2km-deep blanket. The debris spread across the planet, reducing temperatures by five or six degrees, and came close to wiping out the human race.
The solution: The most likely cause of mass death will be starvation, as no new food will be grown. The best we can do is to stock up.
The risk: There have been three super-eruptions at Yellowstone in Wyoming, and the volcano is still active, although a fresh build-up would take several years. 'We expect two super-eruptions every 100,000 years. It wouldn't be a surprise if one happened tomorrow,' says Professor McGuire.
(Evening Standard, August 31 2001)
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