Heat, Floodwaters and Risk Are Rising.

Two of the sharpest created by global warming-flooding and drought-account for more than half the world´s deaths from natural disaster. Nations whose land lies cloas to sea level, licke the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Indonesia, are locations where natural barriers against water have been degraded by ma. Scientist believe that Hurricanes Katrina would have been degraded by man. Scientist believe that Hurricane Katrinea would have paked a far less devasting punch if the wetlands that buffer New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico had not been removed by imprudent levee-building and oil and gas development. As warming creates extreme weather patterns, lives are disrupted. In february 2007, as many as 400,000 Indonesians in the capital city, jakarta, shown here, were displaced by huge floods that followed several days of torrential rainstorms.