This is like a plague. Very Old Testament.
A drowned city.
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(Thanks, posters, for an enlightening conversation on global warming and climate change. I do wonder why we seem to have more extreme weather and spewing millions of tons of pollution in the atmosphere, in my book, probably has something to do with it.)
11 comments:
You should read Michael Crichton's latest novel and check out the foot notes.
I discovered that my excellent Kennedy Democrat government professor at Oberlin College, Aaron Wildavsky, was a key source. (He went on to head the political science department at Berkley.)
In the early 1990's, he had his students research environmental scares like alar (the apple pesticide). Most of them apparently did not hold water.
Blaming global warming for all extreme weather was a major goal of the environmentalists in the book.
Please present evidence before you make your conclusions.
Cal, you're not too smart. I like that in a man. Who has blamed global warming for all extreme weather? Dan? If you think so, your reading comprehension needs some help? Me? Certainly you didn't actually read my comment about probabilities and heat and volatility and the impossibility of "proving" any causation in atmospheric dynamics.
Please present evidence? Why don't you shoulder the burden and respond like a person with at least half a brain and present your evidence to the contrary. We know we are adding heat to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Do you dispute that? We are adding greenhouse gases by as well, which traps heat in the stmosphere. Do you dispute that? We are very sure global warming is happening, increases in average atmospheric and ocean surface temps atrributable to human activity. Glaciers are melting. Do you dispute that? Hurricanes get their energy from surface water? Do you dispute that? Heat makes things more volatile. Do you dispute that? Come on Cal, show us something.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30cycle.html
Well, this article says that frequency of hurricanes probably hasn't increased at all due to global warming, that hurricane frequency is cyclical and we are again at a natural high point, but 25 years later we have developed the gulf and florida a whole lot so there is more distruction and people take more notice. However, it also says global warming probably does increase the severity of hurricanes becasue surface temp of water is higher.
Did anyone hear how our President cut $70 million from the Louisiana Army Corps of Engineers, and they couldn't pay contractors who worked on the levee system? Awesome. Who needs an infrastructure here anyway when we can pay Cheney's and co. to destroy and rebuild a foreign country simultaneously. And nice response from our dipshit president. Where is the rescue? Where was the planning. This administration has a hard time planning for reality.
it is unfortunate that more church ladies are not bloggers. you might have more people explaining that the hurricane is due to the wrath of God and not due to global warming (although the love of money is the root of evil, and pollution may be due to greed, so we may be able to find agreement between church ladies and people who attribute the hurricane to global warming).
glaciers may be melting. ocean levels may be rising. some stuff may be truly underwater, permanently, in the future.
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Won't it be ironic if more people, I mean Americans, die(we are well past in total people)as a result of the IRAQ war than died on Sept. 11 - better as the result of all terrorist activity ever conducted in the United states?
Go Bush. Go War.
Hopefulley this disaster will serve as an opportunity to identify the injustices and evils of institutional classism and racism. Also as an environmental wakeup call. Perhaps even overdevelopment and overpopulation will finally make it into the lexicon of American politics. The pictures speak for themselves. Simply amazing. Those poor people.
This has nothing to do with global warming or the Iraq War. This event is in fact much more important. I predict that the destruction of NO is going to tear apart the national fabric more than any event since Vietnam. NO is a helpless city and has been for decades. It exists entirely on tourism and pass-through revenue from the Gulf oil industry. Who is going to rebuild it? And why? Dennis Hastert has aleady questioned the logic of rebuilding. It's no accident that the vast majority of people left in the city are impoverished minorities. It's not just that the affluent got out before the storm. They got out years ago. NO did not participate in the economic boom of the late 1990's. It never diversified its economy. It's crime rate, on a normal day, is 10% higher than the national average. It's local and state governments are famously corrupt and incompetent (all democrats, BTW). It makes no sense to save NO. But how can you not save it? What message does that send to the roughly 250,000 destitute black people in NO? What does that say about us as a nation? What message does that send to the world? - CF
For the record, let me be the first to say that the federal response (in particular FEMA and the White House) has been appalling. I yield to no one in my support of Bush's illegal neocon "War on Terror", but if we do not have sufficient military resources to prevent looting and mayhem in a major U.S. city, to prevent people from dying of dehydration, then the President should resign. It took 3 hours to secure the Baghdad airport in the middle of a shooting war. How come they can't secure the Tulane University Hospital? - CF
We will see negative spillovers from this in other parts of the country - crime, disease, etc. We had better be ready in Illinois and Chicago. Always assume a disaster is worse than it is.
It does not look like we had resources available domestically to maintain order. We need to surround New Orleans and make people surrender looted weapons.
Going forward, people that sell guns need better procedures and safety precautions for emergencies.
A debate on how extensively to rebuild New Orleans seems legitimate. However, if the U.S. does not rebuild New Orleans to the same extent, the U.S. must have a real transition plan for the people that are orphaned or dislocated.
It does not look like we anticipated the power and devastation of the storm.
Here are ideas:
1. Gasoline Tax - temporarily wave the gasoline tax in Illinois (state level). This might help consumers get through the current spike in price of gasoline. It also might help numerous small businesses and other organizations in IL that must purchase gasoline tax. This in turn will help the economy and state weather the storm.
2. conservation - encourage car pooling and other action to conserve gas.
3. Law enforcement - put people on a higher level of alert.
waive not wave-
same anon fixing anon's prior posting.
http://www.oc.uiuc.edu/announcements/katrina.htm
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