Situation Report

ABC News - Live Coverage Blog - February 5, 2013

A magnitude 8.0 earthquake off Solomon Islands has generated a tsunami and destroyed three villages.

(GO TO THE LIVE BLOG)

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
http://ptwc.weather.gov/

From GDACS . . . Estimated wave height and arrival times of Tsunami
http://tinyurl.com/a72nss9 . . .

USGS - 8.0 Earthquake
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f1s0#summary

West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/

National Data Buoy Center - Facebook Announcement
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=401774316576562&id=128538033843673

Official Report of 01 Ogawa Cholera in Havana

Ministry of Public Health, Cuba - sld.cu - January 16, 2013

The outbreak of cholera (01 Ogawa Vibrio cholerae) in Havana is now being reported as under control.  Cuba has a strong public health system, which has traced the cholera outbreak to a single asymptomatic food vender.  In addition to rigorous epidemiological measures, the Ministry of Health has also stepped up health communication regarding hand-washing, and the use of sanitary measures regarding clean water and the cooking of food.

http://www.sld.cu/sitios/colera/verpost.php?blog=http://articulos.sld.cu/colera/&post_id=1587&c=521&tipo=2&idblog=178&p=1&n=dfp

Image: Oil derricks like this one outside of Williston, North Dakota, are part of a shale oil boom that has helped put the United States on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer. Photograph by Gregory Bull, AP

news.nationalgeographic.com - November 12th, 2012 - Theodore K. Grose

In an indication of how "fracking" is reshaping the global energy picture, the International Energy Agency today projected that the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2017.

And within just three years, the United States will unseat Russia as the largest producer of natural gas.

Both results would have been unthinkable even a few short years ago, but the future geography of supply has shifted dramatically due to what IEA calls America's "energy renaissance."

Image: Currie Wagner looks over the debris from his grandmother Betty Wagner's house, destroyed by Sandy, in New Jersey. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

guardian.co.uk - October 31st, 2012 - Bill McKibben

Here's a sentence I wish I hadn't written – it rolled out of my Macbook in May, part of an article for Rolling Stone that quickly went viral:

    "Say something so big finally happens (a giant hurricane swamps Manhattan, a megadrought wipes out Midwest agriculture) that even the political power of the industry is inadequate to restrain legislators, who manage to regulate carbon."

I wish I hadn't written it because the first half gives me entirely undeserved credit for prescience: I had no idea both would, in fact, happen in the next six months.

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