Made it on a MAC template…

…and it will be home to all further writing, research, and musings, including my Fulbright work in Spain.The blog (link below) steals the domain name – StellarWords – from my first blog, which I maintained as a grad student at Johns Hopkins. (I think I missed the ¨Stellar¨ bit.)

http://www.stellarwords.com/

Hasta pronto!

MGW

 

AIR estimates insured losses in Mexico will account for a small percentage of overall insured losses from this event.  However, it is important to note that the uncertainty in losses is even greater here because of the uncertainty surrounding take-up rates—the percentage of properties actually insured against wind and flood losses. 

After slowing for several hours to a near standstill about 35 miles offshore, the eyewall of Hurricane Dolly finally crossed South Padre Island at around 1:00 pm EDT as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph. As of 2:00 pm EDT, Dolly is located over Laguna Madre, about 35 miles north-northeast of Brownsville. Winds have diminished to 95 mph and Dolly is now a Category 1 hurricane. Central pressure is estimated at 967 mb.

The National Hurricane Center reports that hurricane-force winds extend 25 miles outward from the eye, while tropical storm force winds extend out to 140 miles, lashing a broad swath of the coast near the Texas/Mexico border with strong winds and heavy rain. Forward motion is to the north-northwest at seven miles per hour. Dolly is expected to bring  as much as 15 to 20 inches of rain to isolated pockets and a four to six-foot storm surge.

At Category 2 wind speeds (1-minute sustained winds of 96-110 mph), many homes are likely to suffer damage to roof shingles and wall coverings. There may be also damage to unprotected windows from the wind-borne debris. 

On South Padre Island, the roof of an apartment complex on the island partially collapsed, although the extent of the damage is not yet known. As Dolly moved closer to the mainland, its winds knocked over signs and ripped off awnings. Power has been disrupted to an estimated 27,000 customers in Cameron County, where Brownsville is located. 

Exacerbating the potential damage, Hurricane Dolly virtually crawled toward Texas, battering coastal properties on both sides of the border with tropical storm and hurricane force winds long before the center of the storm actually crossed the coastline. Mitigating the damage is the fact that the sister cities of Brownsville and Matamoros—the largest exposure concentrations on Dolly’s path are located about 20-25 miles inland.

In Mexico, wooden shacks in fishing communities like Higuerilla may not be able to withstand Dolly’s onslaught. Neither are they likely to be insured. The dominant construction type of insured properties in Mexico is confined masonry, which should fare reasonable well. Given Dolly’s slow forward speed, precipitation-induced flood damage may be significant. Dolly made an earlier landfall as a tropical storm on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula on Monday, July 21, just south of Cancun, where it caused minimal damage.

Meanwhile, according to the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior, oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico shut down about 5 percent of production in the Gulf by Tuesday. Personnel had been evacuated from 49 production platforms. However, Dolly’s track is well south of the heaviest concentrations of offshore assets and no lasting shutdowns are expected. Physical damage to platforms and rigs is likely to be quite limited, with any insured losses dominated by business interruption. The figure below shows the AIR modeled windfield for sustained winds of 60 mph and greater overlaid on a map of rig and platform locations.

[This article was written in conjunction with AIR staff for the purpose of client distribution.]

The strongest, deadliest earthquake to strike China in more than three decades hit Sichuan province on May 12^th. The ground has not stopped shaking. Aftershocks continue to jolt the region[1]-a common phenomenon for severe quake events at shallow depths-and some of these aftershocks are causing landslides that have blocked rivers, leading to the creation of barrier lakes. Officials are particularly concerned about one barrier lake in the highlands of Sichuan Province, at Tangjiashan. They fear the lake could burst and flood cities and villages downstream. These threatened areas- from which more than 250,000 people have been evacuated in advance of potential flooding-are the same cities and villages that have been struggling with the devastation caused by the earthquake’s initial shock.

That shock rocked Sichuan at 2:28 p.m. local time on May 12^th, about 90km west northwest of Chengdu, the capital of the province. The USGS initially estimated its magnitude at 7.5, but revised that to 7.8 and then to 7.9. Its depth was estimated at 10km. The quake lasted only two minutes, but was felt in several countries, including Vietnam, Thailand and Russia. In China, high-rise buildings in Beijing and Shanghai-some 1,500km from the epicenter-swayed back and forth. The following day, 12,000 people were reported dead, many of them buried under collapsed buildings. The death toll continued to rise, reaching nearly 70,000 after a month. About 17,000 people are still missing today.

Several factors compounded the severity of the earthquake, including the shallowness of the epicenter and the density of the population in the Sichuan region. With dense population comes dense construction. Apart from recently engineered structures in Chengdu, which withstood the earthquake fairly well, many buildings in the province toppled completely. As many as eight schools collapsed. Factories and hospitals were reduced to rubble, and five million people lost their homes.

Some new buildings did survive the earthquake, suggesting that the current building code- revised in 1976 after the deadly Tangshan quake[2] -might be appropriate if followed rigorously. However, the collapse of so many recently engineered buildings in this region, including schools and hospitals, suggests that either construction quality was inferior, or the seismic codes were not thoroughly enforced. Buildings in Sichuan have escaped adherence to codes for several reasons. First, except for key structures such as power plants, building codes were not strictly enforced before 1976. (Still, some old residential buildings built pre-code actually performed better than newer ones in the May 12^th quake. The older buildings tended to be smaller and comprised of more walls per area, while newer buildings tended to have larger rooms and fewer walls, increasing building vulnerability. ) Second, seismic design and construction quality are only strictly enforced for engineered structures built by relatively large construction companies. Third, some recently built single family buildings-struggling with cost and limited resources-were not seismically designed and constructed under professional supervision. Third, seismic provision for public buildings such as schools and hospitals is not clearly regulated for higher seismic criteria, leaving local practitioners free to interpret the code based on budget and other constraints. Apparently, Chinese building code regulators have noticed this gray spot and requested clarification in future revisions. Finally, some recently built single family homes-struggling with cost and limited resources-were not seismically designed and constructed under professional supervision.

For people who lost their homes, mortgage payments are an immediate concern. In principle, residents are still liable for their mortgage payments, but-during this period of disaster relief-the China Banking Regulatory Commission has ruled that banks cannot enforce mortgage payment. The banks, observers believe, will eventually have to write off these mortgages as bad debt, prompting speculation about what would happen if a similar-sized earthquake occurred in Beijing, another seismically active region in China, where property values are even higher. (AIR estimates that a large earthquake event in Beijing-an M7.3 earthquake for example- would result in $68 billion in insured losses.)

Despite huge economic losses, insurance companies in the earthquake-ravaged region remain healthy because insurance take-up rates there are below the national average, especially on the residential side. (Earthquake insurance is excluded from most standard policies.) Nonetheless, this event-the first earthquake to hit a metropolitan region since 1976-will likely motivate Chinese insurers to evaluate their risk management practices and to design innovative earthquake-related products that will cater to the increasing demand for earthquake insurance, going forward.

AIR has not been permitted to conduct a damage survey in Sichuan, in part because aftershocks continue to make the region dangerous. Such persistent tectonic activity is not unexpected; the quake occurred on the Longmeng Shan fault in the North-South Seismic belt of Central China, the most seismically active area in the country. The Longmen Shan fault itself is located along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Many faults have developed here, but while the majority of these are strike slip faults that are very active (moving at up to 10 mm/yr), the Longmen Shan fault displays primarily dip slip (reverse) movement, and its current slip rate is uncertain; some researchers suggest it moves at less than 1 mm/yr-a relatively low rate compared to other active faults along the plateau margin. The May 12^th earthquake is the first direct evidence that the Longmen Shan fault zone-like other fault zones in this belt- is accommodating a significant amount of crust movement.

.MGW.

[2] China’s building code evolved throughout the late 20^th century and the evolution of this code can be broken down into four periods: the pre-code period, the adoption of a code in 1978 (TJ 11-78), a 1989 amendment (GBJ 11-89), and the 2001 revision (GB 50011-2001). The 1978 code was a response to the 1976 Tangshan tragedy, an earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people. The 1989 amendment resulted from the adoption of the concept of probabilistic hazard, and the 2001 revision reflected the advancement in research, construction materials and practice during the current period of rapid economic growth.

Biofuels are ostensibly great.

They’re renewable. They just might reduce dependence on imported oil. The corn crop used to make them has created rural jobs…They even offer politicians who want to be trendy a chance to show they’re sincere when it comes to finding alternative fuel sources.

But now, several studies are showing the ugly side of renewable plant-based energy; it’s doing the opposite of what its proponents intended it to, by contributing (yup, contributing) to global warming.

When chunks of the U.S. corn crop are diverted to ethanol refineries for biofuel production, the price of corn shoots up. (It’s now at record highs). Happy to cash in, soybean farmers swap–planting corn instead of soybeans. So then there are fewer soybeans in the U.S., and prices rise. Hundreds of miles away, farmers in Brazil, for example, are aware of this deficit in the global soybean supply. Eager to take advantage of the situation, they expand their fields by laying claim to what’s nearby–fields previously home to cattle.

Ranchers, meanwhile, are displaced.And where do they send their hungry cows to graze? The Amazon. It’s being deforested like crazy. Ranchers tear down rain forests that store loads of carbon. That’s no help to global warming.Another consequence of corn diverted to fuel tanks is the steady rise of food prices. In Mexico City, for example, sky high corn prices have sparked tortilla riots.

Flour prices are making Pakistan a shaky place to bake.

And biofuel efficiency is another topic of debate. Apparently, the grain required to fill an SUV fuel tank with ethanol could easily feed one human for one year.

People don’t want to think biofuels are bad; they sure sound sexy and green, but perhaps folks should re-think what they think.

.MGW.

I must go down to the seas again
For the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and clear call
That may not be denied.

I’ll sail down to the seas again
To that wild-hearted life
To the whale’s way and the gull’s way
Where the wind’s a whetted knife.

And I’ll wear summer stars in evening eyes
Drink sea breezes with lime
And cherish every sun-kissed step
Of a wave-licked summertime.

.MGW.

This man, Juan-Antonio Raga, PhD, works at the Marine Zoology Unit in Valencia, Spain. His research, titled “Dolphin Morbillivirus Epizootic, Mediterranean Sea,” explores the resurgence of a fatal virus that’s killing dolphins, porpoises and whales off the Spanish coast.

I just might get to study with him,

if I’m lucky. Below, I’ve outlined what he’s done to make me want to do that…

In July 2007, more than 100 striped dolphins, Stenella coeruleoalba, were found dead along the coast of the Spanish Mediterranean. Of 10 dolphins tested, 7 were positive for a virus strain closely related to the dolphin morbillivirus that was isolated during a previous widespread infection in 1990.

Both infections began in approximately the same region (the Strait of Gibraltar) and at the same time. Both followed a similar course of infection, according to stranding patterns. However, in the current wave, younger animals were apparently more severely affected by the disease.

Two major questions need to be answered concerning why: 1) what was the source of infection or reinfection, and 2) did environmental stress (e.g., pollutants, adverse weather, fisheries) precipitate the epizootics.

The source of the infection, question 1, is completely murky. With regard to the second question, however, there are some leads; striped dolphins killed by the disease in 1990 had particularly high polychlorinated biphenyls levels, and water temperatures were abnormally high during the winter before the epizootic.The role of these environmental factors in the 2007 epizootic remains to be more fully investigated.

I hope I get to help.

.MGW.

Little known fact:

the key ingredient in Preparation H hemorrhoid “medication” is shark liver oil.

Regular fact:

Shark populations have diminished by more than 90 percent in the past 50 years.

Rob Stewart – filmmaker, scientist, and affable guy – tells you this and much more in his documentary Sharkwater. It’s laced with pretty shark footage, some open-water showdowns (shark versus poacher) and colorful squabbles in shark markets across Asia.

Amidst this backdrop, Stewart tries to break down the public’s misconceptions about sharks.

Other filmmakers have shot shark films portraying the finned swimmers as admirable. This film is definitely my favorite though – perhaps because I’m such a fan of Stewart. At 28, the Toronto native was once called the Keanu Reeves of marine biologists.He’s easy on the eyes, adventurous, and he does avant-garde things for science; he’s paving the way to use more popular forms of media to bring conservation themes to young people.

(Is he single?)

Stewart spent five years filming his high-res marine documentary, which counters the web of anti-shark hysteria invoked by fear-mongererfilmmakers and the media. He distills the propaganda to its essential motivations: ratings and money.

Tell your favorite people about this film.

Stop looking for fins and start looking for Sharkwater.

.MGW.