Natural Disasters and Climate Change: Damage Prevention

What Is Climate Change?

Our earth is experiencing climate change. This gradual, long-term rise in temperature is caused by many things, some of them natural, some a direct result of human activity. These include:

• Greenhouse gases: Fossil fuel-powered industrial activities, like manufacturing, power generation, deforestation, and the agricultural industry, are large contributors to carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide entering the atmosphere, increasing the earth’s temperature.

• Heat islands: Highly populated and developed areas can alter how the sun is reflected and/or absorbed by the earth. Large cities with lots of pavement and non-reflective surfaces reflect less energy from the sun in comparison to naturally occurring substances.

• Solar activity: The sun itself can vary in the intensity it emits, which could be a factor that affects climate change. However, scientists have been monitoring the sun for over 40 years, and have found that the amount of solar energy the sun sends to earth has not changed since 1978, even as the earth continues to warm. 

The earth does experience regular climate cycles every 100,000 years that cause it to have both periods of cold and warmth (known as ice ages and interglacials), but alarmingly, as scientists have pointed out, our globe hasn’t experienced this rapid of global warming in tens of millions of years. The result? Increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather events—natural disasters. 

Disasters like hurricanes, flooding, landslides, and earthquakes can be very unforgiving to human life, public infrastructure, and the environment, leading to immense and expensive destruction in their wake. Durable, easy-to-deploy protection is crucial to keeping life as we know it safe from climate change-related natural disasters. 

What Factors Can Affect Climate Change?

Human activity can greatly impact climate change. Greenhouse gases are the number one contributor to the earth’s temperature continuing to climb. In 2020, the amount of these toxic gases surpassed the pre-industrial amount by almost half. 

Cost of Climate Change

The earth’s rising temperatures are proving to be costly. In the 40-year period between 1979 and 2019, 11,000 natural disasters were responsible for almost half of reported deaths and 74% of global economic losses. In 2021, it was reported that by 2050, if climate change isn’t seriously and properly dealt with, it could cost the globe almost $2 trillion every year. 

While actionable measures do need to be taken towards net-zero emissions, in the meantime, affordable, durable protection is more important than ever, protecting communities until real change is brought about. 

Climate Change Statistics

• 2020 was the second warmest year on record ever. 
• Unsurprisingly, there was a record-tying number of 103 cyclones in 2020. 
• The main reason for temperature increases since 1950? Human activity.
• Wealthier countries are the most responsible for climate change-exacerbating emissions, with the U.S. coming in first, China in second, and Russia in third. 

Climate Change & Natural Disasters

Climate change and natural disasters are intimately related. As the globe continues to warm, disasters become more brutal and frequent.

How Does Climate Change Affect the Environment?

Climate change affects the global environment by heating up all parts of the earth. Crucial, diverse ecosystems and the humans that live around them are at risk of huge repercussions, one of those being food insecurity. 

Abnormal precipitation patterns, induced by higher temperatures that increase the amount of water evaporated into the atmosphere, can wreak havoc on agricultural endeavors. 

How Does Climate Change Affect the Ocean?

With ice caps melting, ocean levels are rising, leading to an increase in damaging floods. These extreme floods can demolish critical public infrastructure like roads, bridges, landfills, and more.

Are Natural Disasters Increasing Due to Climate Change?

Yes, natural disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity because of climate change. With greenhouse gases causing both the land and oceans to heat up, our planet is experiencing around one natural disaster a day: wildfires, heat waves, hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, earthquakes, and flood-inducing rainfalls, to name a few. The prevalence of these unstable and extreme weather patterns can leave communities destroyed. 

Types of Natural Disasters Worsened by Climate Change

All kinds of natural disasters are impacted and exacerbated because of climate change: 

• Wildfires start more easily in the dry conditions that droughts produce. 
• Warm oceans cause hurricanes and other tropical storms to significantly intensify. 
• Rainfall continues to increase even out of season, bringing with it dangerous flooding. 

How to Prepare for Climate Crisis Disasters

There are ways to prepare your country and municipality for a natural disaster. To give your community peace of mind before, during, and after an extreme weather event, like flash flooding, proper, effective methods of protection, like TrapBag® barriers, are essential.

Disaster Management

The phases of governmental disaster management provide a framework to deal with the reduction of and response to natural disasters. 

• Mitigation of effects: While reducing carbon emissions can help to mitigate the effects of climate change, to minimize damage from disasters, keep your community protected with effective forms of flood barriers, erosion control, and landslide diversion strategies. TrapBags are the most affordable, reliable method of protection. They can function in many ways to reinforce infrastructure, homes, riverbanks, and farmland, mitigating the effects of flooding. 

• Preparation: Prep for the worst. Alert and inform people residing in areas more prone to flooding that they may need to evacuate to higher elevations in the case of emergency. Stress the importance of having a supply of non-perishable food and drinking water in the event citizens in your area are unable to leave their homes. Encourage the use of easily installed, highly effective flood protection.

• Response: Post natural disaster, location regions that require immediate assistance, whether that be rescue, medical attention, or nourishment.

• Recovery: Rebuild the community’s infrastructure and create a plan to better prepare for future events.

Prevention of Natural Disasters: TrapBag Barriers

To mitigate the damage natural disasters can have on a community, effective barriers, like TrapBags, are vital. 

• Flood barriers: When rainfall is exceptionally intense, TrapBag flood barriers can divert the damaging flow of water away from at-risk areas like farmland and infrastructure. TrapBags can also be arranged as a seawall alternative, providing necessary protection to coastal communities experiencing tropical cyclones or rising sea levels.

• Erosion control: Extreme winds, rising water levels, drought, earthquakes, and landslides can destabilize land. TrapBag barriers offer incredible protection from erosion, ensuring property values do not drastically decline, and the ecosystem stays intact. 

• Infrastructure support: TrapBags can provide reliable stability to bridges, dams, highways, and other forms of infrastructure during floods and storms, mitigating extensive damage, expensive repairs, and loss of employment. 

• Dune stabilization: To prevent flooding or strong winds from eroding land, which can weaken natural flood protection as well as add debris to landslides, TrapBags can be placed in the core of dunes and around the exterior for added stability.

• Diversion walls: During landslides and mudslides, displaced earth can smash into buildings and homes, injuring people and causing huge amounts of structural damage. TrapBags can be filled with concrete to build incredibly sturdy protective walls that block and divert debris.

• Dams: Sturdy dams are integral to preventing flooding. TrapBags block and redirect water, saving lives as well as saving communities from costly, difficult-to-fund repairs.

• Levees: TrapBag levees are water barriers that prevent floodwaters from infiltrating elevated surfaces, like roadways and agricultural plots. 

• Stormwater containment: Natural disasters often result in contaminated runoff—large amounts of floodwater pick up debris from roadways and landfills. If not properly handled, this toxic water can destroy land and pollute water sources, which would be extremely detrimental in areas already experiencing drought. TrapBag stormwater detention basins help keep the inhabitants and environment safe and healthy. 

• Spill control: Chemical and/or oil spills, like stormwater runoff, can be extremely detrimental to the environment, especially agricultural plots. Due to their incredible strength and durability, TrapBags are a great solution to retaining toxic chemicals. 

TrapBag for Prevention of Climate Change

In addition to protecting against natural disasters that climate change worsens, TrapBags can help to prevent climate change in other everyday uses. 

Green Erosion Control

TrapBags are a form of erosion control. Soil erosion can increase climate change by releasing carbon into the atmosphere—TrapBags can help prevent this by providing a surface form of erosion control that does not disturb the ground beneath it, but rather, protects it. 

TrapBags can also be used as erosion control along roads and property, mitigating the need of repairs, which require machinery that uses oil and gas and releases harmful emissions into the air.

Spill Control

TrapBags can prevent ecological disasters by containing toxic waste or chemical spills that occur during natural disasters—climate change has also increased the likelihood of these kinds of dangerous spills happening. 

Sustainably Made

TrapBags are made of geotextiles, which are not only extremely reliable during a natural disaster but are also created with sustainability in mind. Geotextiles reduce carbon due to their long life span, meaning fewer need to be made. 

Ecofriendly Deployment

Unlike other methods of natural disaster prevention or erosion control (like bulk bags, for example), TrapBags do not require heavy machinery to be installed, reducing the harmful emissions that come with gas-powered vehicles.

Beneficial Properties of TrapBags

TrapBags are superior forms of protection during natural disasters and climate change prevention.

• Versatile: TrapBags can be filled with a few substances including sand, washed gravel, and concrete. They can be arranged to form many kinds of flood barriers, offering protection that suits an environment perfectly.

• Durable and dependable: TrapBags’ strong geotextile exterior, along with the engineered leakproof, accordion structure, makes them extremely reliable forms of protective and preventive barriers. TrapBags ensure expensive infrastructure is not compromised during extreme weather events.

• Simply installed: Many forms of effective flood protection are difficult to deploy—TrapBags are not. They do not require heavy machinery to be placed. Installation is very simple due to the interconnected structure of the barriers; they can be laid and arranged on a variety of landscapes, whether it is flat or sloped.

• Fast to deploy: Natural disasters can happen quickly—your form of protection needs to be able to be easily laid on short notice. TrapBags are rapidly deployable, offering a quick and strong form of protection that anyone can set up.

Use TrapBags for Protection from Natural Disasters

TrapBag barriers are the most cost-effective, versatile, dependable flood barrier on the market, minimizing fatalities and structural damage that climate change-related natural disasters can incur. 

Send us a message today to learn more about how you can benefit from the protection of TrapBag, or start placing your order to give more peace of mind to your community.