Philippines Worst Ever Flood Casualties Climb a Notch

100 Dead, Many Missing after Typhoon Ketsana

Philippines govt has appealed for international aid as 250,000 people are forced to abandon their homes

“We’re appealing for more donations of food, water and warm clothes,” the country’s Defense Secretary said.

The death toll from Typhoon Ketsana [aka TS Ondoy] has risen to about 100 with scores more reported missing.

Pedestrians cling to a rope as they cross a heavily flooded street in Manila, Phillipines. Picture: AFP/GETTY. Image may be subject to copyright.

Although the storm is now clearing up,  some reports estimate that up to 90% of the capital, Manila, is still submerged under water.

Many people are stuck either on their roofs or in the top floor of their homes, a report said, while the entire city is without clean water and electricity, and road have turned into deep rivers submerging cars even buses.

Typhoon Ketsana, which struck the Philippines main island of Luzon with winds of more than 100 kph on Saturday, is now heading toward the South China Sea.

Related Links:

• Philippines: Worst Floods in Living Memory
• How Much Can a Single Natural Event Affect You?
• Floods leave 2.5% of Colombia’s population homeless
• Earth’s Human Induced Antiphase Nears Completion
• Remember this Image!

• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Giga Trends
• World CO2 Emissions

• Wall Street Cognitive Dissonance
• Failing Ecosystems
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs

Photos/ videos:

• Reuters Photo Gallery
• Philippines battles flood chaos – (Video contains disturbing images)
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NASA Finds Cheeseburgers on the Moon

submitted by a reader

No they haven’t; neither have they any usable water!¹

These are just hypes and excuses trying to rekindle taxpayers’ interests in unnecessary manned flights to the moon, with a new commercial twist.

But beware also of the blue-ribbon panel, which equally condemns flights to the moon, while recommending that NASA should be privatized beyond anything previously envisaged.

Prodded by a powerful corporate lobby, certain elements within NASA are trying desperately to please a group of super-wealthy investors by way of resuming flights to the moon.

Is there really water on the moon? So what!

Dark shadows obscure craters on the moon’s south pole in a picture from NASA’s 1994 Clementine mission.  Scientists have long suspected the moon might have water, possible hidden in these permanent shadows. Now a trio of satellites have confirmed that water does exist in trace amounts over the entire lunar surface, scientists said in September 2009. Picture courtesy NASA. Caption: National Geographic

The group, which includes the bosses of companies like Google, Oracle, Saatchi and Saatchi, Virgin Galactic, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Space Exploration Technologies Corp … [Tattaglias will guarantee security, Mike,] … are  planning highly lucrative commercial space flights, and ultimately tourist moonshots.

They see NASA as an indispensable “partner” in their joint venture. NASA (the US taxpayer) would fit the flight bill, most of it anyway, while the Virgin Atlantic consortium, assuming they keep the same name, would reap unprecedented profits, making ever larger fortunes from the flights, as they continue to rape the moon.

Unfortunately, the abuse of the system won’t stop there. One day soon, everything to do with space would be highly commercialized, and some of the things you currently take for granted, like free access to space photos and satellite imagery, become available only at a price.

A blue-ribbon panel … called the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, headed by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine … calls for sweeping changes in the way NASA does business and envisions a dramatically expanded role for private enterprise in human space flight in the coming decades beyond anything proposed previously.

A new report by the panel “calls for sweeping changes” in the way NASA is administered and “envisions a dramatically expanded role for private enterprise in human space flight in the coming decades beyond anything proposed previously.”

[Edited by FEWW.]

Related Links:

• An Open Challenge to NASA

• Boeing submits space taxi proposal
• Launching Commercial Space Flight: Part Four
• NASA Lunar Satellite Begins Detailed Mapping of Moon’s South Pole
• Tentative Signs of Water Found on Moon

• Panel Urges NASA to Reset Priorities [Read with extreme care!]

1. REM: Probably traces of water do exist on the moon because  water exists in many celestial objects in the Universe. Even comet nuclei are made up of ice, dust and other particles. But, would the water excuse make going to the moon good science anymore than mining comets for water does?