Saturday, December 04, 2004

Late season typhoon

Taiwan just got hit by typhoon Nanmadol, which is (according to the Taipei Times) the first December typhoon for Taiwan "in recorded history."

A few trees got knocked down around here, but today we have a beautiful clear sky. Other parts of the island weren't so lucky, though.

3 comments:

senioritis said...

So are people in Taiwan talking about how this unseasonal typhoon is a result of global warming?

Jonathan Benda said...

I haven't seen anything about that yet, but when Taiwan was getting hit by a bunch of typhoons a few months ago, Vice President Annette Lu had quite a bit to say about the relationship of Taiwan's overdevelopment to the huge landslides and flooding that parts of the island suffered from. Unfortunately, the way she expressed her opinions was a little ... undiplomatic, and the timing of her comments wasn't exactly right, either. (It sounded to a lot of people who lived up in the mountainous areas that she was telling them they deserved their suffering.)

I haven't heard anything from her after this typhoon, though. (Perhaps she's keeping a low profile because of the legislative elections that are coming up in a week--her party really needs to win more seats.)

Jonathan Benda said...

Well, now they are talking about it. I saw something about it on the news this evening. Again, they're using the "Day After Tomorrow" images in their reporting of this, and talking about small islands that are going to sink because of melting polar icecaps, etc.