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The following excerpt is courtesy of Reuters. Read the excerpt and respond below.

Experts warn that climate change and economic development - particularly building along rivers and flood plains - will leave more and more people vulnerable to flooding in the years to come. Preparation has improved and death tolls are falling, but there are still many lessons to be learned.

2007 saw some of the worst floods in living memory, with communities from Britain to China, India and Uganda left struggling to clear up the damage. The poorer the affected populations, the harder-hit they tend to be. Certain weather configurations - particularly strong waves in the jetstream, high in the atmosphere - can lead to heavy downpours around the world. Climate experts say global warming could make the problem worse, but warn against attributing individual floods or disasters to climate change.

"You can't attribute particular events to climate change," explains Professor Colin Thorne, head of physical geography at England's Nottingham University. "But on the other hand, the conditions that promote serious flooding will become much more frequent than they are now, so the probability is we will have more extreme events."

Other slow onset floods like those that hit Bangladesh every year can also be lethal but tend to give people much more time to move to higher ground. When deaths occur, they are much more likely to be due to disease, malnutrition or snakebites. In 2007, floods in China displaced tens of thousands of snakes into neighboring areas, increasing the risk of attacks. Slower floods are also less likely to sweep away property, although it may still be damaged or destroyed. Areas are likely to remain under water for much longer. In India in 2007, some were unable to return to their homes for months.

Storms, cyclones and other maritime extreme weather can also produce storm surges, which overcome defenses and swamp coastal areas, as happened in New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, Cyclone Sidr in November 2007, and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in May 2008.

Reference: Reuters Alertnet.org

The devastation of the Midwest floods in June 2008 can clearly be seen in these maps from the US Geological Survey. The first image above is a before shot of Indiana taken on June 9, 2008. The second image is a shot taken June 11, 2008. (Click on the images for a larger view.)