WebProNews

Tag: Population Explosion

  • Hurricane Raymond Soaks South Western Mexico, As People Scurry for Cover

    Hundreds more were evacuated, schools and ports were closed, as hurricane Raymond loomed large over coastal south-western Mexico along the Pacific coast on Monday.

    The region is on the verge of being hammered twice in quick succession as it gets back on its feet from record flooding a few weeks ago.

    The category-3 hurricane, with menacing winds blowing up to 125 miles/hour (205 km/h) on Monday, was 105 miles (169 km) offshore, as forecasters said it would move closer and closer before changing its course. The hurricane was lashing heavy rain on coastal areas including Acapulco, which is yet to recover from the storm last month.

    Shortly after noon, portions of city were soaked with water, roads were closed, and beaches were deserted as powerful winds gushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center of United States based in Miami predicted that Raymond will begin to weaken on Tuesday, bringing much needed reprieve to Mexican people.

    Population explosion has left Mexico woefully unprepared to help its people recover from recurrent natural disasters, unlike wealthy Japan and South Korea. As late as 1985, Korea was poorer than Mexico. But rapid reductions in fertility rate allowed Koreans to steam ahead of Latin demographic giant, with far more resources at their command to aid those affected by large scale natural calamities.

    There are no major oil and gas fields or refineries in the vicinity, which means energy supplies to Mexicans will not be compromised.

    “If (Raymond) carries on moving at this speed and the cold front keeps holding it, we’ll have permanent rain for the next 72 hours,” said Luis Felipe Puente, chief of Mexico’s national emergency services.

    The emergency services announced that more than 800 people have been evacuated from the north-western tip of Guerrero all the way to Acapulco. If rainfall does continue over the next 72 hours, it could trigger flash floods and mud-slides endangering the lives of scores of residents in that part of the world.

    Mexico witnessed the worst flooding on record in September 2013, as tropical storms Manuel and Ingrid converged from the Pacific, resulting in loss of 150 lives, while causing $6 billion worth of damage. Almost 6000 people had to take shelter in temporary dwellings as tourism related revenues dried up and hotel occupancy rates plunged.

    Risk of waterborne diseases including Cholera remains high, and might spread to US and Canada due to sheer volume of cross-border traffic, so stay tuned.

    [image from youtube]

  • Cyclone Phailin Menances India as Hundreds of Thousands Flee

    The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is forecasting that Cyclone Phailin with sustained wind speeds of up to 185 km per hour (115 mph) gushing to 200 km per hour would hit peninsular India on Saturday evening from 6.00 pm onwards.

    The category 5 cyclone, termed as Very Severe Cyclone Storm, will impact the coastal states of Odisha, Bengal and Andhra Pradesh where hundreds of thousands of villagers and cattle have started fleeing their homes. Millions of people are expected to face electricity black-outs as regional governments have called on AK Anthony, India’s powerful defense minister, to mobilize Indian military for disaster management.

    Cyclone Phailin has filled almost the entire territory of Bay of Bengal, as tidal waves of over 7 feet are approaching and Indian authorities fear “extreme damage” and flooding of coastal districts of eastern peninsular India. People are desperately stocking up food, fuel, fresh water, and medical supplies while schools and colleges have been ordered closed.

    The menacing storm will interrupt one of the holiest festivals in Hinduism, the Durga Ashtami, as India’s dilapidated transportation networks scramble to evacuate as many lives as possible.

    According to US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, wind gusts of up to 315 km per hour might build-up, considerably stronger than Indian meteorological forecasts. British storm tracking service Tropical Storm Risk has termed Phailin as a “super cyclone.”

    Other forecasters are comparing Phailin to Katrina which devastated Louisiana in 2005.

    The special relief commissioner of the coastal state of Odisha, Pradeep Kumar Mohapatra, claims that 0.5 million people are expected to move to temporary shelters, stocked with food, medicines, fuel, and mobile clinics.

    Bay of Bengal has been the stage for some of the deadliest storms in overpopulated Indian Subcontinent’s history. The 1999 Orissa cyclone took the lives of 10,000 people, with millions more stranded. The 1970 Bhola cyclone, which devastated Bangladesh (then part of Pakistan), remains the deadliest ever, with up to 500,000 deaths and millions of casualties, due to massive flooding of Gangetic river delta.

    [image from youtube]

  • African Billionaires Flourish as Population Explosion Starves Masses

    If you want to know why humanity fails and succeeds, just compare Africa, a continent of 1.2 billion people on one side and China, a continental size country of 1.35 billion on the other.

    In 1980, freshly liberated from the communist tyranny rule of Chairman Mao, China was so impoverished that measured on a per-capita income basis it was at the bottom in international rankings. Even Sub-Saharan Africa’s per-capita income was more than 3-times that of Red China.

    In 1980, China was the poorest nation, far behind Africans, in income per capita (PPP basis).

    Fast forward 32 years later and the landscape of prosperity appears completely reversed. China’s per-capita income in 2012 was 4-times that of Sub-Saharan Africa, a monumental achievement in no small part due to unprecedented efforts by Chinese family planning authorities to curb unsustainable fertility rates and market capitalism introduced by Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor.

    And now comes another displeasing revelation on the state of inequality in Africa. As the number of billionaires are soaring, the continent is left trailing in most measures of human development, with population explosion constricting its teaming masses from reaching their full potential.

    Ventures Africa, a pan-African bi-monthly print magazine and a daily online business news service, reports that Africa today has as many as 55 billionaires, with a combined fortune of $143.88 billion.

    Nigeria, where Christian-Muslim sectarian conflict and explosive fertility rate have taken a high toll on human dignity and standard of living, leads the pack with 20 billionaires, followed by crime-ridden South Africa with 9-billionaires, and an increasingly politically unstable Egypt with 8 billionaires.

    Altogether, there are 10 African countries on the list, with Algeria, Angola, Zimbabwe and Swaziland part of the select club.

    One bright note worth mentioning is that a tiny minority of billionaires have made their fortunes in construction and retail, two sectors which are essential in helping African economic base diversify from its tragic dependence on mining and resource extraction.

    Fertility Rates (births/women), rapidly declined in China, but are unsustainable in Africa and India.

    So what advice can one give to the African and global billionaires to improve humanity’s future? Perhaps invest some of their billions towards family planning, long term contraception, and women’s education in Africa and Indian Subcontinent.

    When fertility rates will resemble those of China, adequate human capital accumulation and prosperity will not be far behind.

    [images from world bank via google visualizer]

  • Dell Focuses On Asia and Africa as Europe, America Decline

    Dell Focuses On Asia and Africa as Europe, America Decline

    It would be an understatement to say that Michael Dell has been quite busy lately. First, it was the $25 Billion leveraged buyout of the troubled company that bears his name, in partnership with private equity firm Silver Lake.

    During the marathon buyout process Michael asserted that “This is a great outcome for our customers and our company…In taking Dell private we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest growing and most successful companies in history.”

    Now that Dell is enjoying its privacy away from the glare of stock market and feeling its roots again, Michael’s second act was to fully focus on the rebirth of Dell as a solutions company for small, medium and large scale enterprises while gradually discarding its old avatar as a products company. Dell had briefly alluded to this impending transformation in an interview released earlier in April 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lygzd1w1sj4

    But it was really at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this past week, where he gave the attendees and tech-world a bird’s eye view of his long term vision for Dell Inc.

    “Our success won’t be measured just by short-term results but also by our ability to help our customers succeed five, ten and 20 years from now…We need to be looking not just at the quarter ahead, but at the decade ahead and investing to create value for customers as long-term relationships with a long-term vision…We are totally focused on transitioning our customers to more agile, more affordable, powerful solutions to help drive their organizations,” insisted Dell.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqGAvua6i3Q

    And it is Asia and Africa with rapidly exploding populations where Dell has set his sights to sell his “more agile, more affordable” solutions. In an in-depth interview with AllThingsD, Dell spelt out his plan for the emerging markets.

    “We’re also really active in emerging markets. We’ve been active in all the obvious ones. But we’re also really active in the outer reaches of the emerging market. We have a billion-dollar business in Africa that is growing rapidly. We’re also active in southern Asia. We’re expanding …into countries like Ghana and Kazakhstan, and Ivory Coast and Croatia and Nigeria. All these countries have governments and telcos, financial and energy companies, all of which need serious mission-critical IT. Half our business today is outside the U.S,” said Dell.

    Dell, which has consistently been one of the biggest and most influential contractors for the mammoth US Federal government even as its global market-share was rapidly eroding, will now aggressively lobby African and Asian governments to purchase technology solutions from Dell-Oracle partnership to boost growth and profits.

    Will this strategy succeed? Since Africa is producing 40 million births/year, 10 times that of North American births, and Asia is producing 74 million births/year, 10-times that of European births, growth will come from Asia and Africa, not Europe and North America, which are rapidly aging and dying. This means Michael Dell, if he plays his cards right this time around, will enjoy phenomenal success. And we wish him well.

    [image from Youtube]

  • Natural Gas: Prices Rally With Rising Population, Middle-East Turmoil

    Spot prices of natural gas topped $3.72 per million Btu last week – the highest in two months – following the U.S. Energy Department’s weekly storage report that showed a tighter supply vs demand scenario.

    The Natural Gas Storage Report, updated weekly by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) since 2002 – includes summaries on natural gas market prices and storage reserves estimates.

    As the greater Middle-East undergoes profound Islamic awakening and political turmoil, energy prices are expected to remain high in the coming years.

    United States and Europe have been excruciatingly slow to wean themselves away from addiction to Middle-Eastern energy supplies, and the current reserves in 48 contiguous states amount to 3.299 trillion cubic feet, down 187 billion cubic feet (5.4%) from last year’s level.

    Production from shale using latest technological breakthroughs including combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have not yet brought North American energy outlook to the promised land.

    Rising economies, led by China, the 800-lb gorilla of East-Asia, have made certain that global demand for natural gas will remain high and supplies will remain tight for decades to come.

    According to British Petroleum’s latest statistical review of global energy, proven global natural gas reserves stood at 187.3 trillion cubic metres, sufficient to meet only 55.7 years of production, due to population explosion in Asia and Africa.

    The world population is more than 7 Billion, with Asia producing 74 million births, or two Canadas each year.

    Middle-East has the highest reserves to production ratio, with vast supplies locked under the hostile territory of Islamic Republic of Iran as well as the more friendly Arab Gulf States including Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

    If the monarchies of natural gas rich Sunni States are destabilized or toppled by Islamic Jihadis in next 10-15 years, the entire energy sector will turn on its head. Natural gas and oil prices will explode to levels never seen before.

    The American economy and the US dollar, already under powerful assault from China and greater East-Asia, will be mortally wounded. To safeguard American people’s future, domestic energy supplies must be expeditiously sought, and relationship with Russia, a natural ally in the fight against global terror must be repaired.

    Let prices of natural gas fluctuate naturally, but US policymakers must make sure that supply of energy exceeds demand to keep American manufacturing costs competitive and household bills tolerable.

    [image from BP Statistical Review]