100 Years of Climate Change: Part 4

The weather is pleasantly warm here in the South East of England, the sun is (mostly) shining, birds are tweeting, trees and garden plants are in full leaf and there’s talk of drought and hosepipe bans on the way – yes, it seems that summer is almost on us.

Weatherwise, plenty was going on in the summer of 1911, so I’m busy getting prepared for quite a few instalments of “100 Years of Climate Change” in the months ahead.

For now, though, I’d like to look back a bit. We’ve had devastating earthquakes this year in New Zealand and Japan, which are still very fresh in the mind, but a few weeks before those disasters burst upon the world’s media, do you remember the floods and storms that were impacting Queensland, Australia?

In particular, you might recall Cyclone Yasi, a tropical cyclone that hammered Northern Queensland at the beginning of February this year, destroying houses in several towns and causing billions of dollars of damage to the sugar cane and banana crops. In an article dated 2nd February, Damian Carrington of the Guardian wondered whether this new “monster, killer storm” would affect attitudes to global warming. Professor Ross Garnaut, climate change advisor to the Australian government, spoke of even more extreme events to come, and warned that “if we are seeing an intensification of extreme weather events now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

In the event, although it did great economic damage and destroyed homes and infrastructure, Cyclone Yasi turned out not to be quite as devastating as it could have been. It missed the city of Cairns, where over 150,000 people live, and there was but a single death attributed to the storm (a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a portable generator.)

Compare this, if you will, to Cyclone Tracy which mauled the city of Darwin in 1974 (under similar La Nina conditions, by the way, which also saw Brisbane under more flood water than it experienced this year), destroying 70% of its buildings, killing 71 people and causing a humanitarian disaster which was “without parallel in Australia’s history”, according to one commentator and which occurred well before the late 20th century warm spell began.

Back in 1911, there were also some pretty destructive cyclones making landfall in this region. In January, a big storm and gale-force winds caused havoc at Marburg in South West Queensland. In February, two great cyclones struck at Port Douglas, destroying crops, almost completely flattening the town and taking two lives.

And then, when a further massive cyclone approached the coast in March 1911, there was a further tragic loss. The steamer S.S. Yongala, a 350-foot vessel built in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had just put out to sea from Mackay, heading north to Townsville. There were 122 people on board, and the ship’s cargo included a bull and a racehorse called Moonshine. On 23rd March, a signal station at Mackay received a telegram warning of the cyclone but they had no way of warning the Yongala, which had just left, as the ship had no radio. And although the skipper, Captain William Knight was an experienced and well-regarded seaman, the storm proved to be a disaster for the steamer – she sank, with all aboard her perishing. The only body to be washed ashore was that of Moonshine, the racehorse. The wreck lay undisturbed for almost half a century and was not fully located and identified until 1958.

There was a tragic irony in that a radio had actually been on its way to the Yongala – a wireless set had been ordered from the Marconi Company in England, but it arrived too late. If there had been a radio aboard, it would probably have made the difference between life and death.

Earlier this year, the centenary of the sinking of the Yongala was marked by a memorial ceremony at the maritime museum at Townsville.

There are two points I suppose I’d like to make. Firstly, to see cyclones, hurricanes and floods in their proper context, look at history (as today’s global warming enthusiasts seem unwilling to do.) These are not new phenomena, whipped up out of nowhere by man’s fondness for fossil fuels. The sort of extreme weather events we see taking place in recent times have also taken place repeatedly in times past, with – as far as we know – no greater frequency or intensity than they are taking place now.

Secondly, modern technology is the key to having a better chance of surviving these tantrums of nature. Using radio and telephone communications, towns and cities can be evacuated, isolated people can be warned and lives can be saved. This is what happened in Queensland earlier this year when Yasi was threatening, and it is what could have saved the Yongala and her passengers and crew a hundred years ago.

Up in the Treetops

During my recent visit to Tokyo, and strolling one afternoon through a park in Koto-ku, I glimpsed something through the foliage overhead, something high in the sky, shiny and metallic. The long-distance photo I took that day (which I’ve decided not to publish here) did not do it justice, for it is, in fact, a very tall, very modern and impressive structure indeed. What I had seen, for the first time was the Tokyo Sky Tree.

Very tall structures are not unknown in the Tokyo area, which may seem paradoxical, given the restlessness of the Earth’s crust under this particular region; in fact, or so Wikipedia tells us, Tokyo has no less than 44 buildings and structures taller than 180 metres. I’m familiar with Shinjuku’s garden of skyscrapers, which includes the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building No. 1 (or Tocho), and also the orange-and-white Tokyo Tower over in Minato-ku, completed in 1958 and now the second-tallest building in the city. I never got around to visiting Tokyo Tower when living there during the late 1980s, but I did visit Yokohama Marine Tower many years ago, and, more recently, have been to the Sky Garden, an observation deck 273 metres from the ground, at the top of the Yokohama Landmark Tower (highly recommended – the view of the harbour district and the surrounding city is breathtaking.)

The secret to withstanding the sort of kaiju-grade earthquakes that rock Japan from time to time, is of course clever and sophisticated construction techniques, employing devices such as the tuned mass damper, which reduces the amplitude of the a quake’s destructive vibrations. Yokohama Landmark Tower, for example, has two of these dampers, and the Tokyo Sky Tree is built around a central shaft of reinforced concrete, which can move separately to the steel framing and acts both as a damper and as a stairwell. It also has a tuned mass damper right at the top, and pilings which spread out through the soil beneath the structure just like the roots of a mighty tree, and which also help to keep it secure.

What is the Tokyo Sky Tree, anyway? It is a tower, and currently the tallest one in the world (also the second tallest structure in the world, after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa), of lattice construction, like its forbears Tokyo Tower and the venerable Eiffel Tower. It will serve as a TV and radio broadcasting tower, being tall enough to beam terrestrial television over the surrounding high-rise cityscape, and will also have an observatory and a restaurant. They hope to finish building it in December this year and open it to the public in spring 2012, and I would very much like to visit the Sky Tree when I next come to Tokyo.

Here are a few more assorted facts about this structure. It is white with a touch of indigo (to symbolise the bluish white – aijiro – of Japanese porcelain) and will be lit up at night by arrays of LED lights, in blue and purple on alternate days. It will be precisely 634 metres tall, and this is a clever example of Japanese wordplay, as the numbers 6, 3 and 4 can be rendered in Japanese as “mu”, “sa” and “shi”, making up the word Musashi, which is the old name for the province of eastern Japan which incorporated Tokyo and its neighbouring prefectures.

My interest in these sorts of massive constructions has grown in recent years, as they represent for me the sort of high-tech, modern and aspirational world I want this to be. Some years ago I read about the plans for something even more ambitious, a 2000-metre tall, 500-floor skyscraper in the Tokyo Bay area called Aeropolis 2001, which would have been a decent first attempt at building an arcology – a vast and self-contained high-density human habitat, the like of which has existed, as yet, only in science fiction. Sadly, the bursting of Japan’s “bubble economy” in the 1990s, and the resulting slow-burning recession, meant that Aeropolis 2001 never became a reality. However, the completion of the Tokyo Sky Tree will mark, for me, the return of something like that confident, soaring and future-oriented spirit.

Sitting high above the human jungle, this is the closest one can be to outer space, without travelling in an aeroplane, rocket or balloon. When I next return to Tokyo, I’m looking forward to going up to the observatory of the Sky Tree, having a cup of coffee perhaps, and simply enjoying the magnificent view.