I'm actually sick of hearing about New York... its like its the only place to have been affected! Haiti and Cuba look apocalyptic in parts, but its all about NYC. Don't get me wrong, I really feel for everybody affected, but the media reality gets on my tits

Yes Its Sky , BBC or ITV or Ch4
who gets the best pictures.
The Fight is on.


Meanwhile in the Middle East the War
is not that important now.



I want a Debate about weather changes
and is this more the future
as the Ice is melting and the winds
are changing

I keep seeing pictures of the flooded subway in New York and it's just insane. Some of the pumps installed in that system are actually second hand from when the Panama Canal was built in 1914. No wonder everything went to ****.

Yes I agree the amount of press and media coverage is a bit disproportionate when considering the number of lives ultimately lost. I don't remember this much coverage when Hurricane Katrina or the Boxing Day Tsunami struck which resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

There are natural disasters happening all the time all over the globe but as these do not have the temerity to strike Manhatten they receive far less coverage.

The problem is, no one is prepared for the larger problem...like the ocean flooding your city. Pumps aren't going to do a damned thing. Technology is moving in the right direction, IMHO, but with the wrong products. iPhone or legendary pump system? :joker:

Really? I remember much more coverage on Katrina and the tsunami.

Maybe it seems so much more nowadays because we've got Twitter, more people use the internet, and news reporting is so much more immediate and word-of-mouth based than it was only until recently

It's true, something hits that big-ass city and the media is all over it. A 4.5 mag earthquake in Los Angeles gets more coverage than a 7.7 in Northwest Canada. Quite the joke.

Feels like they're making NYC into the new Katrina, and Boxing Day wave wasn't as big as the Japan quake/tsunami.

Edit: media-wise

according to the news reporters |NYC has no specifial defence in place? Throw in the fact romney wants to slash to fema emergency response, under romney this threat worsens. he wants to privative the emergency response service? how on earth would that work against a 1000 mile storm? surely you need nationwide government strategies to counter the freak storms

Someone just posted this on fb actually :

http://i.imgur.com/2GsOt.jpg

Me too and I live in America.

Well the thing is, I read that anything over an inch of surplus rainwater would inundate the subway pumps. That seems like it needs aggressive upgrading to me. :laugh:

I mean fair enough, they can't protect against the Sandy-scale flooding but they need new pumps immediately.

And I don't think it's a case of technology moving in the wrong direction, but more a case of money going to the wrong places -cough- for-profit companies -cough cough-.

Well to be fair, Haiti and Cuba looked like disaster zones BEFORE the storm hit them, so it's really not as dramatic as a disaster in America.

Also New York and the north eastern seaboard has a much larger population affected as well as a huge number of tourists from all over the world affected.

Remember all the attention the volcano in Iceland got? It was front page news for weeks and it was far less destructive. All it really did was affect people wanting to fly/airport closures, but we heard about it every night on BBC, CNN, etc.

yes Im sure thats just what the poor people whos lives homes have been destroyed and even died, thats all they need is for a bunch of ignorant comments from you mocking them and their country, shameful as always:nono:

I wasn't mocking them, it's the truth. I was explaining WHY major developed and highly populated countries get more attention than 3rd world countries with a much smaller population. The change or "before and after" shots are far more dramatic, and obviously the news loves drama, and obviously the media is far more sophisticated in developed countries than in 3rd world countries. New York probably has more journalists per square mile than any other place in the world.

Just like during Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans got far more news coverage than all of the smaller towns in Louisiana that were also devastated by the storm. Can you name any of the other towns destroyed by Hurricane Katrina without googling?

rubbish, youre were mocking them and pouring scorn on nations who have just been hit by hurricanes, sick. youre not even decent enough to admit it. pathetic:nono:

You DID mock them.

Well said Glenn :wavey:100% accurate...Shameful stuff from alex as usual

How is it mocking to say the truth? They do look disaster struck BEFORE the storm, therefore the before and after pictures are not as dramatic.

Spare me your patronizing 1st world guilt BS.

trolls. :nono:

What do you think Cuba looks like exactly, do you think it's all shanty towns and mud huts or something

wtf are you talking about? mud huts are you joking? You really need to educate yourself.

Cuba is one of the poorest nations on the planet. The vast majority of people are living off of government hand outs and rationing of food staples for decades, That's what communism IS. that's what i'm talking about.

Most Americans do not survive off of government provided staples and have never experienced food rationing or needing that kind of immediate government support. Obviously the difference is much bigger for Americans going through a disaster, and having to rely on government support, than for Cubans. That's the difference i'm talking about.

Most Americans get what they need through private corporations, electricity, water, housing, food, it's all private, they arn't used to being dependent on the government like Cubans are.

Also, Most people watching CNN, or BBC or any cable news channel is going to relate to a disaster more through American eyes than through Cuban eyes, not to mention the Cuban government has such limited rights of free press that there arn't many ways for journalists to go and report on it to begin with. The Cuban government like most repressive communist governments (China, North Korea, etc) tries to control the press and doesn't want a bunch of images of the disaster spread around the world for people to criticize the government.

I agree with what Niall said. ;)

Yeah obviously I was joking because you seem to have this idea that the whole of Cuba looks like a "disaster zone" day to day which obviously isn't true, places like Havana and Sanitago de Cuba (which was hit hardest by Sandy) are beautiful cities. It is far from being one of the poorest nations on the planet. It's not hugely wealthy or prosperous by any means but they actually have a very high literacy rate, a low infant death rate (lower than the US btw) and pretty high standards of education and healthcare

Anyway yes I can understand why the media focus has been a lot more on America because the scenes are more shocking to most in the West, but I can also see why it would seem to just be a disregard for any lives which aren't American

Bump