The recent flight tests of an upgraded nuclear bomb in the Nevada desert mean that the United States is preparing for war, military analyst Oleg Glazunov told Sputnik.

Despite posing no direct threat to Russia, the recent test of the bomb  “means that the Americans are preparing for war”, Glazunov said.

He also mentioned the role played by the powerful military lobby, which will keep pushing for ever newer weapons in the US arsenal.

“The upgraded version of the B61 bomb will be used to replace the almost 200 unguided B61s the US now has in Europe. The Americans will say that this is done against Iran, but there is also Russia out there, right?” Glazunov noted.

He added that the recent tests of the B61 nuclear bomb could also be meant to intimidate North Korea.

Glazunov said that he doesn’t think that the Americans are really going to use exactly this type of nuclear bomb against North Korea.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201708301056912247-us-nuclear-bomb-test-b61/

Apparently, a lot of Air Force personnel and planes have left the US for "undisclosed" overseas postings...

As water began to recede Wednesday in some parts of flood-ravaged Houston, Tropical Storm Harvey shifted its wrath to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, hitting the region with record-breaking rainfall and devastating floods.

“Our whole city is underwater right now but we are coming!” Port Arthur’s mayor, Derrick Freeman, said in a Facebook message overnight, as desperate residents sent out calls for help on social media.

Water filled homes and submerged roads, evacuees crowded shelters, local officials urged people who needed rescue to hang sheets or towels from windows, forecasters warned that the storm could spawn tornadoes, and the Louisiana State Police closed Interstate 10 heading toward Beaumont, just a few miles from the state line. The rain was expected to continue until Friday.

In Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner said that he was pressing for the city to return to normal as quickly as possible. He said the city’s George Bush and William P. Hobby airports were scheduled to reopen Wednesday with limited service, and that school will start Sept. 5.

Here is the latest:

• Officials have reported at least 38 deaths that were related or suspected to be related to the storm. The victims include a police officer who died on his way to work; a mother who was swept into a canal while her child survived by clinging to her; a woman who died when a tree fell on hermobile home; and a family that is believed to have drowned while trying to escape floodwaters in a van.

• More than 32,000 people were in shelters in Texas, and 30,000 shelter beds were available, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said 230 shelters were operating, and that 1,800 people had been moved from shelters to hotels and motels.

• The governor said 210,000 people have registered with FEMA for assistance.

• The National Guard has conducted 8,500 rescues since the storm began, Mr. Abbott said, and the police and firefighters in the Houston area have done a similar number. About 24,000 National Guard troops will soon be deployed for disaster recovery in Texas.

• The storm made its second landfall at 4 a.m. Wednesday just west of Cameron, La., near the Texas border, the National Hurricane Center said. Harvey was expected to move northeast, gradually weakening and becoming a tropical depression by Wednesday night.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/hurricane-harvey-flooding-houston.html

Harvey is keeping a foot in the Gulf... That is to say that as it swirls around, half of it is still hovering above the Gulf of Mexico, pumping moist warm air as never before. The weather patterns tells us that it's likely to move eastwards, still half-way over the Gulf, pumping more water to dump over the lands. Be prepared New Orleans... Global warming is real and anthropogenic. 

“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often under-valued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in Bihar state.

“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”

On Wednesday, police said a 45-year-old woman and a one-year-old child, members of the same family, had died after their home in the north-eastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, and a two-year-old girl had died in a wall collapse.

They said another three people had died after being swept away in the neighbouring city of Thane.

The rains have led to flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swaths of farmland.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/30/mumbai-paralysed-by-floods...

global warming is real and human induced...

While media outlets are suggesting climate change is to blame for exacerbating Hurricane Harvey's conditions, a much worse hurricane hit Texas more than a century ago—before Americans drove to work.

The media have been quick to blame climate change for the devastation, which as of this writing has resulted in 30 flood-related deaths.

Politico magazine declared "Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like." The Washington Post attempted to blame President Donald Trump's "climate skepticism" for more storms in the future. The Guardian said, "It's a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly." NPR reported the storm's size and impact "points to climate change."

Environmentalists have often told Americans to become vegans to stop climate change, to "fly less, drive less, and eat less meat" and have fewer children to save the planet.

There was a time when Americans were not flying, and hardly any were driving. And the storms were worse.

read more:

http://freebeacon.com/issues/hurricane-worse-harvey-hit-texas-americans-...

Yes yes yes, Elizabeth Harrington, you are quite correct to point out that the storm in 1900 might have been stronger than Harvey...  And there has been storms stronger than Harvey around the globe as well.

So what should we make out of all this? several things. In real terms, Harvey was a small storm. A small hurricane that should have been gone within a couple of days, but the conditions of "global warming" including record temperature of the Gulf of Mexico increased its potential not so much in terms of wind but in terms of the amount of water it soaked out of the Gulf and is still soaking out. The second point here is that by 1900, the industrial "revolution" had already released an enormous amount of CO2 (by burning mostly coal) in the atmosphere for Arrhenius to mention the incoming influence of this EXTRA CO, by the late 19th century. But let's not harp about it, whether we can apportion some of Harvey devastation or not, global warming is still there, undeniably present and  increasing as shown by serious scientific measurements. 

As I have said many times before, should we be able to "detect" global warming by pointing a lickspittled finger in the air, we would be cooked within five years. 

Harvey’s toll is already immense. Thousands are still stranded, and the death toll is 39. Many Houston streets are lakes or raging rivers, and flooded hospitals have had to evacuate. There’s no clean water in some areas, and a chemical explosion about 20 miles from the city has forced even more evacuations. The full extent of the damage won’t be known for weeks, but President Trump has still assured the victims that Congress will move quickly to provide relief.

“Believe me, we will be bigger, better, stronger than ever before,” he said from the White House on Monday. “The rebuilding will begin and in the end it will be something very special.”

But Trump has already undermined the likelihood that Houston will be able to rebuild stronger and smarter than before. Days before Harvey pummeled Texas and Louisiana, Trump signed away the requirement that future building must comply with tougher flood standards that were set by President Obama. That means future building and rebuilding after disasters will be more prone to destruction—not just for unprecedented events like Harvey, but for the everyday kind of inundation that climate change is making more common.

A single sentence tucked into Trump’s executive order on August 15 reversed President Obama’s executive order from 2015, “Establishing a Federal Flood Risk Management Standard.” Obama’s order raised elevation standards for new federally funded projects to better withstand flooding, but now, federal dollars for repairing Harvey’s damage will require building standards that disaster-risk experts consider too lenient. 

Read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/08/trump-can-say-whatever-he...

An upbeat and optimistic US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have visited with victims of Hurricane Harvey, touring a Houston mega-shelter housing hundreds of displaced people and briefly walking streets lined with soggy, discarded possessions.

• In Donald Trump's second visit to the disaster zone since Harvey hit, he met with displaced people for the first time
• President and first lady hugged children, handed out hot food at Houston's largest emergency centre
• Visit came as his administration worked to provide financial relief to flood and storm victims

Mr Trump met the scene with positivity, congratulating officials on an emergency response still in progress and telling reporters he had seen "a lot of love" and "a lot of happiness" in the devastation the storm left behind.

"As tough as this was, it's been a wonderful thing," Mr Trump said.

The trip, to Houston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana, was Mr Trump's second to survey Harvey's wake.

It was a chance for him to strike a more sympathetic tone than during his first visit — when he had minimal interaction with residents, saw no damage and offered few expressions of concern.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/donald-trump-visits-harvey-victims...

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has estimated the damage from Hurricane Harvey will cost up to $US180 billion ($225 billion), calling it more costly than epic hurricanes Katrina or Sandy while fuelling a debate over how to pay for the disaster.

• Harvey killed at lease 47 people and displaced more than a million people
• Governor says damage is worse than Hurricane Sandy which cost $US120 billion
• Recovery efforts are underway but authorities are struggling to cope

Harvey, which first came ashore on August 25 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in 50 years, has killed an estimated 47 people, displaced more than 1 million and damaged nearly 200,000 homes in a path of destruction stretching for more than 480 kilometres.

Mr Abbott, who is advocating for US Government aid for his state's recovery, said the damage would exceed that of Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005, and Sandy, which overwhelmed New York city and the US north-east in 2012.

"Katrina caused, if I recall, more than $US120 billion," Mr Abbott told Fox News.

"[But] when you look at the number of homes and business affected by this I think this will cost well over $US120 billion, probably $US150 to $US180 billion.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-04/harvey-damage-could-climb-to-$225b,-texas-governor-says/8868482

Split the difference and you can say that at least $20 billions of these costs are directly due to global warming. The next storm costs proportion of global warming will go in a hyperbolic crescendo...