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From VOA Learning English, this is In the News. |
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The Philippine government is defending its efforts to get assistance to victims of Typhoon Haiyan. |
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Many have received little or no assistance since the storm struck a week ago. |
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Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said Friday in the city of Tacloban that the need is massive, |
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immediate and not everyone can be reached. |
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The aircraft carrier USS George Washington and other US Navy ships arrived in the Philippines this week to help with disaster relief operations. |
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The ships brought helicopters and emergency aid. |
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The Navy is deploying the helicopters to inspect damage from Typhoon Haiyan. |
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The aircraft are also being used to transport supplies to affected communities. |
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The aircraft carrier also has medical services and can produce 1.5 million liters of fresh water a day. |
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The storm displaced hundreds of thousands of people. |
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The country's chief of disaster relief said Friday that at least 3,600 people are known to have died. |
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The amount of food and other aid sent to the Philippines has increased in recent days. |
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But moving the aid from airports or other areas has been a slow process, in part because wreckage blocks many roads. |
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Scientists say Typhoon Haiyan was one of the strongest storms on record ever to hit land. |
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Some people wonder whether man-made climate change played a part in the typhoon. |
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Bob Ward is with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. |
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"There's certainly strong circumstantial evidence because we know that the strength of tropical cyclones, |
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hurricanes, typhoons, depends very much on sea surface temperatures. |
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They act as the fuel. |
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And we've got very warm waters in the Pacific at the moment, |
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which have been increasing because of climate change, |
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and those very warm waters are what powered this typhoon." |
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Bob Ward says the intensity of storms seems to be increasing. |
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"Our models are not very clear at the moment. |
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But we might expect in the future that we might even see fewer, |
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but those that do occur will be much stronger than we're experiencing now." |
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Benedict Dempsey is with the aid group Save the Children. |
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He says detailed weather predictions meant that some aid workers were already in place when the storm hit. |
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"Half a dozen people went into the path of the storm |
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in order to be prepared for the response in Tacloban and elsewhere in the Philippines." |
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He says aid agencies are learning to prepare for natural disasters of this kind. |
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"Between around 2002 and 2011, on average over 260 million people a year are being affected by disasters. |
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And so we're seeing the reality of these trends acting out on the ground, |
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and it's absolutely something that we're having to prepare to respond to in the future." |
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Benny Peiser is director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. |
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His group questions whether human activities are to blame for rising temperatures. |
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He says people should be concerned about disaster preparation instead of cutting gases linked to climate change. |
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"This was the 20th tropical storm to have hit the Philippines this year. |
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So this is going to continue no matter what we decide on CO2, these storms will continue." |
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Climate change talks are taking place in Warsaw, Poland. |
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At the talks, the Philippine representative appealed for an agreement to cut industrial gases like carbon dioxide. |
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Scientist Bob Ward says the delegates should pay close attention. |
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"I think this typhoon will focus minds very much on the fact that if we squabble and delay in getting an agreement, |
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we're going to see more and more of these kind of events with very, very severe human costs." |
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But observers at the Warsaw talks say a deal on cutting greenhouse gases still appears to be far away. |
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And that's In the News, from VOA Learning English. |
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I'm Bob Doughty. |
