As a poster child for the impact of climate change on developing nations this cyclone, is a truly terrifying phenomena. In the next 24 hours it will make landfall at most likely Cat 4 or Cat 5 Hurricane Strength.
The animation above is live and covers the last three hours. This animation shows the last 24 hours.
Madagascar is an impoverished nation of nearly 30 million people the majority of whom live in the path of this Cyclone's wind and forecast extreme rain.
Whilst at Cat 4 strength a day ago what was already Intense Cyclone #Batsirai underwent a eyewall replacement and slowed down, it is now accelerating and strengthening.
This is a cyclone with the destructive potential of the Atlantic hurricanes which have become legends, Andrew or Dorian. Had it been approaching Florida, evacuations would have been ordered for those in its path days ago.
Madagascar is three times the size of Florida with 50% greater population. The area which will be effected by hurricane force winds in Madagascar (see above) is likely the size of all of Florida.
The entire island is - the world's 4th largest at 490k km2 - 50k km2 larger than France - is forecast to receive 50-700mm of rain in the next 10 days, more than half of it looks like it will receive over 200mm of rain. This is forecast to be a truly biblical event,
What looks likely to be the most impacted area in the south East receives most of this rain over a period of less than 30 hours, between 3am tomorrow morning and 9am on Sunday (UTC).
Here's an animation of rain accumulation (latest GFS model) over the next 10 days. While Batsirai itself will pass swiftly it is dragging with it a huge mass of extremely wet air with it which will continue to bring rain to the island for 10 days+.
From what I can see there are no Western News reporting teams in Madagascar for this storm. And among major global news sources, only @CNN has covered it. UN has issued flash alerts about it but it has not had as much UN PR attention as Storm Ana did.
As I say, a poster child....
For a world which is doing next to nothing to address the consequences of climate change on those least able to protect themselves.
For a world which isn't even paying attention to a climate catastrophe that was obviously coming a week ago.
/ENDS
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I attended the Bonn climate talks. They were very disappointing to everyone. The elephant in the room was (of course) the U.S. decision to withdraw from the talks altogether.
Unfortunately.. perhaps intentionally in advance of the continuation of climate talks regardless of #US_Disintigration the talks were also very sparsely attended particularly by activists and NGOs. The reason for this was @elonmusk destroying @-USAID.
@elonmusk As you can see the USAID Twitter account is now dead - deleted which is an appalling act of vandalism executed by Elon and his tech-bro team of teenagers.
This article is deeply depressing. For my part at Scoop.co.nz it is clear to me that:
1. The Govt has a deliberate strategy - probably not official but nevertheless operative to destroy NZ media. 2. This is not going to change any time soon. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-07…
& Sadly from what I discerned last year the @nzlabour opposition is both apathetic and indifferent to the plight of media. Also the @NZGreens. And have always been so for as long as I can remember.
This is extremely disappointing
@nzlabour @NZGreens I will be returning to NZ in August to ensure continues to function in these very difficult times for NZ media. We have faced numerous big challenges recently and thank our supporters and readers for their support.Scoop.co.nz
Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.