Tsunamis

 

Tsunamis are a series of tidal waves that are caused by displacement of very large bodies of water typically oceans and seas.  These tidal waves can be caused by massive landslides, volcanic eruptions beneath the ocean, tectonic earthquakes that happen beneath the oceans surface can cause tsunamis, as well as meteorite ocean impacts.  When tsunamis are generally formed offshore they are usually unoticable, thats because offshore the tsunamis amplitude(heigth)is only a few inches above sea level, and its wavelength is usually a few hundred kilometers long.  When the tsunami gets in shallower waters is when the actual tidal waves are formed, which can form from a 46 ft high surge like that recorded in alaska in 1946, and the largest ever recorded was also in Alaska in 1958 caused by a huge landslide that produced swells up to 1700 ft high.  Such tsunamis can devour islands and cities along coastal areas.

Japan is a common place where tsunamis are formed.  There has been over 195 recorded events there.  On Dec 26, 2004, an Indian Ocean tsunami was formed that killed over 200,000 people.  Right before the tsunami hit, there was an event called a drawback, which happens right before a tsunami comes to shore. The water usually receeds dramatically past the point that water usually submerges the land.  In India people ran to the not normally exposed land to gather fish and other aquatic animals not knowing that there was about to be multiple tidal waves come crashing down on them.  If they were aware of the signs, they may have been able to save lives including their own,

Site: wikipedia



Egyptian Tourism Revenue is at threat

On December 5th, is when the fatality occurred which led to government officials closing the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.  The fatality wasn't the only attack the resort received within that week, nor was it the first time being closed.  There were 4 other reported attacks earlier that week that lead to closings of the beach. one being fatalities, but most of the people were seriously injured.  The closings of the beach gives officials time to get ahold of expert marine biologist across the world to come out and help capture the marine murderer. One whitetip shark was held accountable for at least 2 of the attacks, possibly a third, and a second shark was witnessed as well that leads to belief that it is the shark is responsible for the other attacks.

Because of these attacks at this Red Sea resort, tourists are afraid to get in the water to engage in any water activity such as snorkeling, swimming, diving, etc.  Government officials say that if these attacks lead to tourists avoiding vacation getaways to Egypt, it will affect there tourism revenues drastically.  Tourism Ministry spokeswoman Omayma El-Husseini says that "80% of the tourists come to Egypt to spend time on the eastern coastline seeking sun, sand and diving." If that eighty percent were to not come to the Egyptian resorts, then it will impact their $14 billion revenue target for 2011.  Also, the resorts and beaches hold 13% of Egypt's jobs, and if these attacks do bring the governments fears to reality, jobs will also be lost and will affect family's and people that live in the communities. 

Watch news clip:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sites:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/47327/

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-06/shark-experts-fly-to-egypt-after-killing-of-tourist.html

S- HELL, in Nigeria

The Niger Delta in Nigeria is the biggest oil producer of petroleum. It has 70,000 km of landmass that have oil rivers all through it, including many oil rigs and refineries. Shell Petroleum Development Company is the co. that is stationed in Africa with its many refineries. The production of petroleum is about 2 million barrels a day. The production gives Nigeria 75% of there export earnings. But not only does it give the Nigerian government alot of money, but it also led to alot of pollution, violence, and poverty. From the years 1970-2000 there has been 7,000 oil spills. Also, Shell flares about the equivelent of 41% of Africas natural gas consumption. In 2003 Shell flared about 99% of there excess gas(waste gas). This leads to more pollution in the air and the most greenhouse gas emmissions on the planet.

Because of the pollution the some 31 million people of the Niger Delta are not happy with the government. The government lets one of the biggest slums located there continue to get worse and worse. Millions of people reside there so they could run there own businesses and try to make money, but because so many people go and sell things at there market, nobody makes enough to make a living off of. Of all of the money that comes from exporting the petroleum in Nigeria, none of it goes to improving the towns and villages. This causes the people to get even angrier at them, to the point a miltia is formed. A malitia called MEND (Movement for the Emancipated of the Niger Delta), there goal is to totally cripple the Nigerian government from producing oil. They are very mad that the oil recovery has led to destruction of there land. Many rivers hold less and less fish for them to get for food, and less and less plants grow where oil poisons there land. And they have nobody to blame but the oil companies. Untill they leave they threat that more and more oil workers will be held hostage, and maybe even more bombs will get closer and closer to there gates. Whatever it takes, they want Shell and its workers to leave their land.

Nothing to do with geography, or does it?

And now, for the remix.......

Chernobyl

On April 26th, of 1986 there was a terrible, unexpected disaster that happened in Ukraine.  This event became the worst nuclear power plant disaster ever in the world, Chernobyl.  Chernobyl is a city in the Northern part of  Ukraine, near the border with Belarus.  It is in the Kiev Oblast Province of Ukraine, Kiev also being the Capital of Ukraine, South of Chernobyl, more in the central Ukrain area.
 On the date of the explosion, before the actual accident occured, there was a test supposed to be run to test how long the turbines wouild run after a power outage.  The unprofessionaly trained workers started the test, and when the operator went to do the automatic shutdown the reactor was at extremely unstable conditions. Pressure built up as the extremely hot fuel interacted with the cooling water and caused an enormouse amount of pressure built up.  The first out of the 3 explosions released a bunch of fission  products into the atmosphere.  During the second explosion, parts of the core reactor, graphite, and parts of the fuel channels were released into the atmosphere as well.
The explosion of core reactor 4 at chernobyl put radioactive materials into the downwind atmosphere spreading into belarus and parts of europe.  The explosion killed 2 operators immediatly and over the next three months killed 30 other people and several other deaths later down the road. Most of the deaths were caused by ARS(Acute Radiation Syndrom). ARS causes alot of damage to organ tissue due to the exposer.  Contact with radiation or ARS could also lead to other medical problems such as tumors, cancer, and genetic damage.  Another reason why we don't need for another nuclear accident in this world let alone the United States.
Sources;

• Nuclear Fission
• Nuclear Power
• Chernobyl Disaster
• Chernobyl, Ukraine
• Radiation sickness

Europe Tourism

Tourism in Europe is very popular and common.  Europe has three major cities that are visited by tourists every year, Paris, London, and Rome.  These cities are the three most visited cities by order. The rich culture heritage cities are not the only reason why people flock to Europe for a visit or vacation, there are also beautiful mountain ranges that cover most of the southern part of Europe; including The Alps, Pyrenees Mountains, Carpathian Mountains, and the Dinaric Range, these mountains were key geographical areas that were used in historical invasions.  Many times The Alps, also known the "Magnificent Traitor" to the Italians, was conquered and crossed by many armies and invaders so they could enter Italy.  There are also a lot of ancient castles(chateaux) that lay throughout Europe, like the Palace of Versailles in Ile-de-France.  Plantations of grape vines used for wine, grape juice, table grapes, and raisins are known as vineyards, also visited.

In 2007 France was the most popular tourist destination in the world, attracting 81.9 million foreigners, which is more than Frances population.  This years total is tourists is not including people traveling through, it is people that are staying more than 24 hours and less than a year. Tourism in France puts up 6% of the countries income.(Tourism in France- wikipedia).

London is another one of the worlds most visited cities, attractions including the Buckingham Palace which is still in use today, the Tower of London, and Tower bridge(London Bridge).  Another common thing to do when visiting London is to visit the chains of museums. There is also the British Library that has old classic manuscripts such as Alice in Wonderland. Tourists help London with 10% of their gross income, as well as helping people get jobs, about 13% of the workforce. Tourism in London-Wikipedia

Rome is a very important place for tourist to visit because it holds a fragile piece of history that impacted the world of religion.  There you are able to find remains of the Roman Empire, like the Colosseum, palaces, churches, the aqueducts, and buildings inside the central civilization of early Rome. Besides the empires history there are also many different museums to visit, especially the Vatican Museum, which possess sculpture and masterpieces of Renaissance art. Rome averages 7-10 million tourists a year. Tourism in Rome- wikipedia

Other References:
World Regional Geography 10th edition; Douglas L. Johnson, Viola Haarmann, Merrill L. Johnson, and David L. Clawson.

Rescue capsule "Phoenix"

Chili became the highest in GDP per capita in Latin America in 2006. With exports of forestry wood material, fresh fruit and processed food, seafood, and wine, Chile also has  more dangerouse minerals to obtain like copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, coal, and iron; which needs to be mined.  These important minerals, especially copper, gives Chile one third of their income through exports with China, US, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, and Brazil.  So you understand why it is important for Chileans to put the fear aside and mine for these listed minerals.

A nun comes to Camp Hope to await the arival of the survivors

Mining for anything posts up all kinds of dangers and hazards for the workers/miners.  The miners face things like suffocation, gas poisoning, gas explosions, vehicle collisions, wall failures, and the most feared, roof collapsing and possibly killing alot of people.  But roof collapsing could also lead to trapping miners in the mines for an unknown amount of time.  On the date of Aug, 5th 2010 the San Jose mines in Chile collapsed trapping 33 people inside the gold and copper mine.  68 days into this incident officials, families, residents, and even two presidents are awaiting the rescue of all 33 miners, the rescue is supposed to begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday evening October, 12.  For the last two months a camp was put up at the mining site, the camp was named "Camp Hope", here the families waited in tents along with everyone else helping.  The hostility has grown from the anxiousness and the anticipation of their trapped family members making it through this alive. 

Yesterday they tested out a capsule looking device that is only a half of meter wide that has a phone and an oxygene tank in it.  This capsule is called the phoenix, it will lowered down a 600 meter well that was drilled several weeks ago.  Here they will lowere two mining experts and two paramedicts so that they could help assist the miners in the rescue.  One by one, the survivors will be hoisted up this long tunnel in a tiny capsule where they will see daylight and even their families faces another day.

Sites:
-msnbc
-Voanews
-Wikipedia
- JoesKitchen
-dangers in mining

Coup d'etat

Revolution- A rapid and massive fundamental change that changes the society to the core, political, social, or economically.

 On this day, October 5th, 1910 the last king of Portugal stepped down and went into exile with the along with the rest Royal family from a Revolution.  A revolution that started on the 3rd with the army going against their orders to take over warships anchored in the Tagus river.  Instead of putting down a mutiny on the warships they set up posts around Lisbon.  The following day the exact warships started to lay down fire on the  Palace of Necessidades(the Kings palace), after that the king went and got his mother and grandmother and fled on a yacht to Oporto, when they got there they realized that the revolution was taking over there, where they were forced into exile and arrived in England.
The revolution led to the first Republican party that was placed in Portugues, on October 5th, 1910, as well as a president,  Teófilo Braga.   This revolution ended the monarchy and began a parliment that stated less presidential power and two chambers of congress.  It led to two conservative republican parties like Evolutionist party and republican union.  As well as clientelist party that behalved the monarchy. The revolution lasted for 16 years before there was another throw over the government.
A revolution can do alot of things, even overpower a government, it just matters how much heart is put behind it.  The military that did the initial move and set up around Lisburn had no clue that there actions were going to even work, infact they were very scared.  But little did they know, it started something that changed the society DOWN TO THE CORE in just a few days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_October_1910_revolution

Brazil

http://www.vmapas.com/Americas/South_America_Political_Map.jpg/maps-en.html?map_viewMap=1

My class activity is on the Country of Brazil in the South American Continent.  It's Continent is bordered with the S. Atlantic Ocean and the S. Pacific ocean.  South America has a total of 12 Countries and Brazil is not only the largest one, but it is also the 5th largest in the country by geographical area(3,287,597 sq miles) and total population.  It's September estimate of this year was a total of 193,525,000 people, ahead of that is Indonesia then United States.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population)  Out of it's neighboring latin american Countries, it is the only country that speaks the Portuguese-language, even the only country that speaks that language in the U.S.

According to the World Bank, Brazil is the eighth largest GDP capita in the world with a total of 1,571,979 US dollars.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)  What fasinates me the most about Brazil is it's climate.  The country is so  large that it has five different kinds of climate throughout the Country.  It's climates range from equatorial to , subtropical, semiarid, temperate, and highland tropical.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil#Climate)  As you can see it is mostly tropical weather, that's where I need to be let's say for the, ohhhhhh, seven months.

Illegal Immigration

When you think hear Mexico you most likely think of resorts and clear blue waters, but it's not all nice resorts and blue waters.  Mexico actually has a lot of very poor and corrupt areas, not exactly a nice place to raise a family.  Don't get me wrong, Mexico is beautiful, but at some places there are small tin roofed shacks stretched as far as the eye can see, shacks that people and families reside in.  This is part of the reason why some of the people leave or have left valuables, homes, and even loved ones behind in Mexico so they can go to America in search for a better life, or a better life for their children. In America their children automatically are United States citizens if they are born here. 

They come and live in America several different illegal ways.  Some hike to the border where there isn't alot of border patrol there and they wait for the right time to climb and enter the US territory, but over the past decade the border has improvised.  They have more than just border patrol vehicles driving up and down the border line of Mexico and the US.  They also have cameras in the hot spots, or the most popular crossing sites.  The aliens also get into the US by homemade wooden boats and cross the Atlantic ocean where they can then enter into America.  They also have been known to cram in boxcars, shipping containers, or trucks and paying off corrupt authority or smugglers to get them into America.  There are many more ways they migrate illegally into the US.  Once in America they look for "low skilled jobs", jobs that don't attract alot of employees and are really labor intensive.  Even though hiring illegal immigrants is breaking the law, some employers do so they can save money by not paying them as much as state laws require.  The illegal immigrants then save that money and sometimes go back to Mexico and live wealthy or bring the money back to their families so they can afford more.  However, it might be the only way they can get out of poverty.

Sighted websites;
        http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/illegal-immigration.html

Oil Spill Affecting Fishermen and Restaurants

My first blog goes back to a few months ago when the BP oil rig blew up in the gulf of Mexico.  After the rig blew it sent a spewing 210,000 gallons(5,000 barrels) a day into the gulf.(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/05/how-much-oil-has-spilled-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.html )  After days, weeks, then months went by and the oil was not able to get plugged, fishermen that make their living off of the livestock were being affected by the gulf spill.The spill has closed down the gulf by 5%, even at 37% at one point(http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100602_closure.html). The waters are closed off to fishing because of food consumption safety reasons, that leaves roughly 63% of federal waters for fishing. That makes it hard for fishermen that live all along the gulf to make their earnings. Especially when those closed off waters land right in some of their backyards.
  With the oil pouring into the Gulf also brought along with it another kind of economic disaster, soaring prices on seafood such as shrimp, oysters, crab, etc.  Something like that also takes hefty tolls on restaurants not only in state surrounding the coast, but all around the United States.  Some restaurants had dropped their menu prices down a huge chunk even before the raised seafood prices for fear and foretelling of what could happen(http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-06-23-Gulf-food_N.htm ).  Some of the restaurants had to even close down because even though the FDA claimed food to be safe for eating, a lot of customers still steered clear from having seafood in their order. This is an example of how alot of people make their living on fishing and livestock, and if something happens like in this disaster, alot of people are affected. It's a harsh "Domino-affect".

Watch video on affected restaurants: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid42806360001?bctid=101579457001