NatGeo film series, Tsunami: Race Against Time, debuts Nov. 24

It’s been more than a generation since the last seriously devastating tsunami hit the Hawaiian Islands, and most residents have no memory of the threat.

We should remember—so that next time we can protect ourselves and the people for whom we are responsible.

 

 

The 1946 April Fool’s Day Aleutian quake sent a tsunami that devastated Hawaiian coastlines from Hawai’i Island to Kaua’i. The 1957 Aleutian quake’s tsunami caused significant coastal property damage in the Islands. Both destroyed homes and ran up rivers, taking out bridges. The 1960 Chilean quake's tsunami swept in from another direction. Between them, those three events killed more than 200 Hawai’i residents.

The history of the tsunamis of the Hawaiian Islands is kept by Hilo’s Pacific Tsunami Museum. 

Now a new series of films from National Geographic graphically reminds us of the hazard. It is a warning built on the biggest tsunami disaster in centuries—the Christmas tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which hit December 26, 2004. 

The series is Tsunami: Race Against Time.

That series of waves was generated by one of the largest quakes in recorded history, undersea off Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an unbelievably massive event, calculated at magnitude 9.1. The 1960 Chile quake was larger at 9.5, but did not cause as much death and damage.

I reviewed the film series. It contains footage you’ve never seen, and graphically describes the events that killed more than 200,000 people in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other islands and coastlines struck by the tsunami.

It contains first person interviews with survivors, heartbreaking stories, often with real-time imagery of those same people. It describes helplessness and heroism in the face of overwhelming conditions. And the desperate effort of Hawai’i’s tsunami scientists to warn the residents of a different ocean.

“The pure carnage of rushing water,” says one orphaned survivor, who lost his parents in the tsunami.

Among the most tragic images are of families holding each other and then torn apart by swirling gray water. Or of the clueless people who wait too long to run, or who watch until the water washes them away. Of bodies drifting in the water. And of wounded people who die in the aftermath, because the disruption was so severe that it was not possible to get medical care in time.

Most of us followed news footage of the quake and its tsunami in the final days of 2004 and early 2005. But that coverage could not provide the perspective of time. Twenty years later, survivors and rescuers and scientists provide that perspective.

Here is how the film’s producers describe their project:

“Marking 20 years since one of the deadliest natural disasters in history which spanned 14 countries, TSUNAMI: RACE AGAINST TIME provides a 360-degree view into the heart-stopping events of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“The powerful series, from executive producers Tanya Winston and Danny Horan of multi-award-winning Blast Films and directed by Daniel Bogado, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker of Nat Geo’s ‘9/11: One Day in America,’ features personal accounts from survivors, scientists who raced against time to understand the catastrophic disaster and warn the world, journalists who broke the shocking news, and the fearless rescuers who risked their lives to save others.

“Told through harrowing video and gripping stories of survival and courage – some both seen and heard for the first time – the four-part series offers a comprehensive and immersive look at the destructive wave as it surged across the ocean, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.”

The four-part series premieres Nov. 24 at 4 p.m. (Hawai`i time) on National Geographic and streams starting on the 25^th on Disney+ and Hulu.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

China fires missile into the South Pacific. Provocation? Islanders are concerned.

China just launched a nuclear-capable ballistic missile smack into the central South Pacific, without bothering to notify the target country.

What the heck could that mean?

The rocket didn’t come near Hawai’i. It was at little over 2,000 miles south. 

But that rocket flew some 7,000 miles from China to its watery landing spot. The distance from Beijing to Hawaii is just 5,000. Beijing to San Francisco is 6,000.

Was the Sept. 25, 2024, missile a message, or, as China suggests, just a routine test? Not routine, certainly, since China hasn’t done anything like this in more than 40 years.

Hawai’i folks have expressed concern about North Korean rockets gaining the capacity to fly as far as the Hawaiian archipelago, but China has long had that capacity, and it demonstrated that with the Sept. 25 launch, which reportedly terminated within the exclusive economic zone of Kiribati, near Caroline Island.

Caroline is an uninhabited atoll south of the Equator, in the Southern Line Islands. French Polynesia is to the south and east of it. The Cook Islands are to the west. U.S.-controlled Jarvis and Palmyra are to the north.

China warned the United States and Russia of the proposed launch, which is required by treaty, but did not bother notifying the target nation, Kiribati. France, New Zealand and Australia also got notice. Japan and French Polynesia did not.

China reported the missile carried a dummy warhead.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that China has three models of nuclear-weapon-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as Dongfeng, or East Wind. They are the DF-5, DF-31 and DF-41. Sources differed over whether the Sept. 25 missile was a DF31 or 41.

All three of the missiles have the range to reach either Hawai’i or the West Coast. The DF-5 is silo-based while the other two are transported on mobile carriers, some of which are off-road-capable.

The nation of Kiribati, which has benefitted from Chinese investment in recent years, expressed concern about the launch of a military rocket into its waters. 

French Pacific waters are just south of the rocket landing zone, and officials in Papeete also expressed concern. Radio New Zealand reports that China threw a dinner party in French Polynesia to calm the waters.

The international only news magazine The Diplomat suggested the launch was hardly “routine,” as China suggested. It was the first Chinese launch into international waters since 1980—more than four decades.

That doesn’t mean it was provocative. “Beijing’s motivation for this test launch might not have been the desire to send a political signal, but rather a need for technical data,” The Diplomat wrote.

That said, officials of numerous of the nations of the Pacific have expressed concern. China has been actively courting Pacific nations on the trade front, but until now, it has not suggested that it carries a big stick behind the open pocketbook.

Wrote The Diplomat: 

“China has made progress in winning over some of the Pacific Island states, but has run into resistance from others that fear turning the region into an arena of China-U.S. strategic competition. Firing a nuclear-capable missile into the midst of the islands not only stokes that fear, it positions China as an aggressor.”

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

As Florida cleans up from two hurricanes, Hawai`i is dodging the bullet. Instead, we get hot and dry.

 Hawai’i has benefitted in recent years from the lack of strong hurricanes, while the folks on the Atlantic coasts have taken multiple hits from big spinning storms.

Tropical storm activity can be cyclical. Sometimes it’s higher in the Atlantic; sometimes in the Pacific. That seesaw pattern has been linked to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern associated with ocean water temperature, air temperature, jet streams and rainfall patterns.

During El Nino events, warm water pushes into the eastern Pacific, and tropical cyclones are more likely and stronger in the Pacific. They call El Nino the warm phase. In La Nina, those waters are cooler, and the storm action moves into the Atlantic. They call it a cool phase.

Currently, we’re in a neutral period, but NOAA says we’re likely moving into another La Nina.

Back in May 2024, the National Weather Service predicted a lower-than-normal hurricane season for the Islands, anticipating that shift from neutral to a cooler phase. In a May 21, 2024 press release, NOAA reported:

“Hurricane season in the central Pacific region is likely to be below average this year,” said Matthew Rosencrans, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS). “A key factor influencing our forecast is the predicted arrival of La Nina this summer, which typically contributes to less tropical cyclone activity across the central Pacific Ocean basin.” 

So far, only Hurricanes Gilma and Hone, at the end of August, came near enough to Hawai’i to cause significant weather events locally.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic has been ravaged, pretty much as predicted.

Nine hurricanes in the Atlantic so far this year, four of them Category 4 or greater. The Eastern U.S. has been hit by two powerful and destructive cyclones in just the past month: Helene and Milton.

And the continuing transition into another La Nina does not bode well for the Atlantic coastlines.

With two months to the end of the hurricane season, Hawai’i can hold its breath with a little hope. A storm might come, but it’s less likely than average.

So what about next year? The latest NOAA El Nino forecast suggests the incoming La Nina will last into the beginning of next year. Beyond that, it’s hard to know what will happen.

But all this is playing against a background of significant climate warming. The World Meteorological Organization notes that El Nino/La Nina is not the only climate driver. It is predicting warmer temperatures over all land areas and all oceans, besides the La Nina-impacted eastern Pacific.

As you’ll see from the World Meteorological Organiation chart below, that cooler weather is south of the Hawaiian Islands. Like most of the rest of the globe, we in the Hawaiian Islands have warmer than normal weather likelihood. 

The WMO also suggests rainfall for Hawai’i will likely be lower than normal from September through November 2024. 

Hotter and drier. Welcome to the future.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

 

 

 

Anti-disease forest fungi thrive when they can hear their neighbors: a lesson in diversity

 

There is such value in diversity.

We can take a lesson from a new bit of science that suggests that life performs better when surrounded by its community.

This study found that certain fungi grow faster—many times faster—in an environment that includes sound, even if the species itself does not make sounds.

In the soil, if you were to insert a sensitive microphone, you would pick up the rustle of ants, the scuffling of scurrying beetles, the whisper of larvae, the swooshing of earthworms on their liquid missions and the motion of all the other critters that normally occupy a healthy underground environment.

Fungi don’t have ears, but from this study, clearly they can sense the presence of other creatures by the impacts of their movements, and you could anthropomorphize that they appreciate the company. They certainly behave as if they do.

This particular study was published in the journal Biology Letters. It was reviewed in the New York Times here. 

Wrote Times writer Veronique Greenwood: “Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. If the laboratory findings can be replicated in nature, then sound could be an unexpected new tool for improving the health of forests, encouraging beneficial microbes to take root and thrive.”

In this case, the researchers just played white noise for the green fungi, and saw dramatic increases in growth compared to the fungi grown in silence.

And here’s a leap.

A totally other piece of science, from the 13 September 2024 issue of Science magazine, expressed concern that the survival of Asian forest trees that contain anti-cancer properties is threatened. People are going into the forest and harvesting the trees to rarity and endangered status.

“Without these trees, cancer patients will lose access to a vital treatment,” wrote authors Gao Chen, Xiang-Hai Cai, Jia Tang, Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne Renner.

In Hawai’i, we have seen the impacts of loss of diversity. If you lose a pollinating bird species, you risk losing the plants they pollinate, and then the insect and fungal communities that rely on those plants. Round and round it goes.

Back to the fungus study, researchers aren’t sure how the fungi are sensing the sound.

“The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon may be fungal mechanoreceptor stimulation and/or potentially a piezoelectric effect; however, further research is required to confirm this hypothesis,” wrote authors Jake M. Robinson, Amy Annells, Christian Cando-Dumancela and Martin F. Breed.

But it was clear that in the presence of sound—all other things being equal—this little green fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, produces lots more biomass and also produces more spores, than in silence.

And they give back to their forest community. These little life forms colonize tree roots, and then protect the trees from disease and rot-causing fungi. They’re so good at it that they’re used as a natural fungicide—applied to leaves, seeds and the soil around valued plants.

Nature’s message is that a diverse community is a far healthier, more productive one.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

Navy: Targeting Ka'ula Island bird refuge weekly with bombs and guns would only result in "incidental" take

 The Navy’s new proposal to expand bombing and gunnery practice at Ka’ula Island seems insupportable, both morally and as a matter of federal law.

Here is the Draft Environmental Assessment that includes the Ka’ula impacts.

It expands potential military operations at the tiny island to 55 per year, more than one a week. That is on an island that is a designated state seabird sanctuary (established 1978) and contains endangered and state and federally protected plants and birds, and marine protected species in the nearshore waters.

Ka’ula is one of the four islands of of Kaua’i County (Kaua’i, Ni’ihau, Lehua and Ka’ula). The designated weaponry impact area is 11 acres at the southern end of the 130-acre island.

Ka’ula is well known in Hawaiian history and chant. The bird life there was once so dense that the island was used as an example of overcrowding. 

(Hā’iki Ka’ula I ka ho’okē a na manu. There is no room on Ka’ula, for the birds are crowding. –from ‘Ōlelo No’eau by Mary Pukui.)

It has been bombed since 1952.

The Navy over the years has steadfastly resisted calls to end its bombing, from fishermen, from U.S. Congress members, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, from the Kaua’i County Board of Supervisors (1961) and Kaua’i County Council (1975), and from federal fisheries and wildlife officials.

And from the State of Hawai’i, whose attorney general in 1978 asserted the island belongs to the state. That conflict over ownership was not resolved, and state officials now say the ownership is contested but no recent efforts to assert state control have been reported.

Weapon strikes are proposed to be limited to the designated 11-acre “impact area.” But that has not always been the case: 1) A 1978 fisherman’s report saw bombs exploding both in the water and among seabirds; 2) The Draft EA says there are likely live munitions on the island outside the impact area; 3) On one occasion in 1965, bombs intended for Ka’ula landed on Ni’ihau, more than 20 miles away.

The new proposal says only inert weapons will be deployed in the future.

The birds and seals of Ka’ula, as well as passing whales and dolphins, are protected by the US. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act as well as the island’s designation as a State of Hawai’i bird refuge.

The Draft EA proposes that the impact of bombing, gunnery exercises, helicopter landings and other activities are acceptable. There are Hawaiian cultural sites, including stone temples and habitation sites, but they are outside the designated impact zones and so, “impacts on cultural resources would be less than significant.” (Page 3-86)

The Navy’s legal justification for harming wildlife is contained in a federal law, the 2003 National Defense Authorization Act. It “gave the Secretary of the Interior authority to prescribe regulations to exempt the Armed Forces from the incidental taking of migratory birds during authorized military readiness activities,” the Draft EA says.

Based on that, the Draft EA argues that targeting a wildlife refuge and protected bird nesting site with bombs, shells and landing helicopters would result in takes that are merely incidental. The Draft EA says (Page 3-30) that the Department of Defense has a responsibility to minimize and mitigate its impacts. But it seems at least problematic to argue incidental and minimized when the wildlife refuge is the target.

The Draft EA argues that health, safety and noise are not issues because there are “no human sensitive receptors” nearby. This, of course, does not address the impacts on the health, safety or hearing of protected sooty terns, threatened black-footed albatross or endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

The Navy asserts that it owns Ka’ula. That position has long been challenged by Hawai’i.

The island was set aside by the Territory of Hawaii for use by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1924 as a lighthouse reserve. Commerce conveyed it to the Coast Guard, which operated a navigational light there until 1947, when it was permanently shut down.

Instead of returning the island to the territory, the Coast Guard in 1952 authorized the Navy to conduct bombing exercises, apparently without the authorization of territory. 

Kaua’i County residents began regularly protesting the activity within a few years, at the behest of anglers who said the bombing was impacting birds, which the fishermen depended on to locate schooling fish.

U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink in the early 1960s urged the island’s inclusion in the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and the Department of Interior started but failed to complete that inclusion.

The Navy rejected the Hawaiian ownership arguments, and in 1965, U.S. Rep. Spark Matsunaga reported that the Coast Guard had transferred its authority over the island to the Navy.

The comment period for this Draft EA is ending. Comments go to pmrf-lbt-ea-comments@us.navy.mil.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

John J. Berger''s new climate book: A comprehensive approach to saving the planet

 The top-of-mind responses to the climate crisis tend to be few and simple.

Use less fossil fuel and switch transportation to electric vehicles, restore forests, recycle, eat less meat.

But a serious response requires a broad rethinking of everything about how we live on the planet. And that’s complex.

John J. Berger’s new book runs through a lot of the approaches that are already underway and makes recommendations for how to proceed. The book is Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth.

Berger is the author of Climate Myths, Beating the Heat, Forests Forever and more. He is a noted environmental writer and climate policy expert, and in his latest book he conducts a comprehensive review of strategies to address our warming climate.

Some possible solutions are underway right now or at least starting. Manufacturing steel that doesn’t depend on massive fossil fuel inputs. Replacing oil-based products with ones made from plants. Electric and fuel cell aircraft.

There’s green concrete, new approaches to recycling, buildings that produce more power than they use, hydrogen cargo trucks and so much more.

There are examples of farmers who have turned problematic fossil-fuel-reliant businesses into thriving green enterprises that restore the soil and entrain carbon. He outlines the benefits of saving and expanding forests.

He reviews some of the geoengineering approaches, like sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, and seeding the skies with compounds that reflect solar radiation.

He takes a realistic look at the issues associated with decarbonizing planet-wide.

There’s clearly lots to be done at the legal, policy and international affairs levels, Berger writes. His to-do list starts with a national recognition that we are in an emergency, and that we need a National Clean Energy Transition Plan.

But it would all be so very costly, right? Maybe not.

“Various studies have found that a clean-energy transition would cost no more than 2 percent of gross domestic product in the United States,” Berger writes. He says he worries about the accuracy of those estimates, but even so, “that’s a pretty good deal, given all the other economic, environmental, and health benefits the United States would also receive.”

Berger’s book is a little overwhelming in its scope, but it’s well-written and anyone interested in how we need to approach this crisis will find lots to chew on. That, and some hope. It may be complicated, but it's possible, is Berger's message.

It does occur to me that, given the topic of the book, an actionable strategy for Berger would have been making the ebook dramatically less expensive than a paper copy of the book, but it’s close to $20 for the electronic version. Here, here, here and here are a some ways to find Solving the Climate Crisis.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

Polynesian voyaging driven by resource shortages

 A lot of the research into Polynesian voyaging looks at how it was accomplished and when, but less work has been done on why.

Why would groups of individuals, living in Pacific paradise islands, expend enormous treasure and energy to build great canoes and outfit massive voyaging missions?

The answers are coming.

This blog first looked into the issue in 2007.

That article reviewed a paper that suggested that sea level changes between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, which created resource shortages, could have launched the Polynesians eastward into the Pacific from the islands near Asia.

And now, there’s new research that suggests a second period of resource shortages 1,000 years ago drove the final exploration phase—the one that led to the inhabitation of Hawai’i, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Cooks, and eventually Rapa Nui and Aotearoa.

The suggestion is that a huge, multi-century central Pacific drought, from about AD 900 to 1200 drove settled populations out of the central Pacific and led them to locate new homelands that could feed expanding populations.

A team of Hawai’i, United Kingdom and New Zealand researchers in 2020 published a paper saying the signs of that drought can still be located in lake sediments in the Pacific Islands.

Their work answers that nagging question about Pacific voyaging: Why? Why would islanders in rich environments expend vast resources to build and provision voyaging canoes, and then sail into the uncharted ocean?

The paper’s authors are David A. Sear, Melinda S. Allen, Jonathan D. Hassall, Ashley E. Maloney, Peter G. Langdon, Alex E. Morrison, Andrew C. G. Henderson, Helen Mackay, Ian W. Croudace, Charlotte Clarke, Julian P. Sachs, Georgiana Macdonald, Richard C. Chiverrell, Melanie J. Leng, L. M. Cisneros-Dozal, Thierry Fonville, and Emma Pearson. Morrison is a senior archaeologist with Honolulu’s International Archaeology, LLC.

Their research paper, “Human settlement of East Polynesia earlier, incremental, and coincident with prolonged South Pacific drought,” was published in 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That prolonged drought was detected in sediments in Efate in Vanuatu, ‘Upolu in Samoa, and Atiu in the Southern Cook Islands. Other data from Tahiti and Kiribati also supports the drought hypothesis. It lasted from about AD 900 to AD 1200.

Their suggestion is that exploratory voyagers sailed out initially around 900, that they located islands and brought that information home, but that actual colonization took place generations later.

But once again, the message is that Polynesians voyaged because they had do.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024