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#51 2005-08-31 19:41:14

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

*This situation is mind-bogglingly awful.  sad  The images on TV and etc...looks like a 3rd-world nation almost.  So many, many homes visible only by roof; homes slammed together; buildings completely collapsed; smashed-up debris everywhere the camera turns; water still pouring in some places; talk of disease and starvation; still so many people stranded/needing rescue; gunfire and chaos in portions of New Orleans; rampant looting; people lined up for relief from Red Cross trucks.

How can New Orleans survive this?  And other portions of the Gulf Coast too; portions of Mississippi in as bad shape as New Orleans and etc. 

It's not just the people and the buildings, it's businesses too.  People out of jobs, businesses destroyed...

It's unimaginable.  I can't believe what we're seeing on TV.  sad 

Bodies floating in the water, hundreds maybe THOUSANDS of people dead...

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#52 2005-08-31 20:01:35

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Another interesting idea would be to somehow get Visa or Mastercard on board and come up with special 'emergency credit cards' which could only purchase certain goods and services up to a certain limit per card when the government declared an emergency in an area. This would limit the number of people who elect to stay behind for money reasons, although fraud would probably be a show-stopper, which is bad, because that would greatly simplify the accounting for disaster relief - aid could be directly distributed to victims without much in the way of middlemen.

This has potential to be a fabulous method of distributing aid. High marks from me for this idea Treb. . .

With computers and the scanners, the card could be restricted to buying food, water and the like.

Indeed, many banks might very well distribute fistfuls of $50 or $100 pre-paid debit cards with their logo and write it off as marketing.


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#53 2005-08-31 20:33:14

C M Edwards
Member
From: Lake Charles LA USA
Registered: 2002-04-29
Posts: 1,012

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

I wonder about this whole levy thing. Is it a good idea? It can increase the areas we can live in but what are there probabilities of failure. How robust can they be made and what measures are in place for if they fail. I really can't gauge the whole cost benefit of them.

To understand the ultimate benefits of levees, you should look at what would happen without them.  New Orleans would go away immediately, of course, but wait long enough and so will Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, St. Louis, half of Chicago, most ports along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, a quarter of Kentucky's farmland, several small gulf coast and atlantic ports, etc.  Flooding would see to what land subsidence did not.  The US levee system is vast - much bigger than most people realize.  Its construction was the rural electrification of its day, and it has become one of the unseen backbones of our economy. 

That's part of what makes it so difficult to go back and try to mitigate some of the damage levees cause: we desperately need them.

Not everything coming out of this is bad.  Believe it or not, small hurricanes actually tend to help local economies.  They create construction booms.  My (foolish? brilliant? ruthless?) brother is already sneaking around north of Lake Pontchartrain to gauge the local business potential for his contracting business.  Many more will follow.   wink

However, the destruction from Katrina is so extensive that it may take a year or more to slip back into the "construction boom" economic regime.  And it's starting to look like some of the population redistribution it caused will be permanent.  If just 10% of the people who evacuated decide they aren't going back, it'll be the economic equivalent of my entire city just packing up and leaving one day.


"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

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#54 2005-08-31 20:43:33

C M Edwards
Member
From: Lake Charles LA USA
Registered: 2002-04-29
Posts: 1,012

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Another interesting idea would be to somehow get Visa or Mastercard on board and come up with special 'emergency credit cards'

This has potential to be a fabulous method of distributing aid. High marks from me for this idea Treb. . .

With computers and the scanners, the card could be restricted to buying food, water and the like.

It has potential.  It could be an efficient way to get subsistence to evacuees once they're sheltered in unaffected areas.

Katrina has done enormous damage to Louisiana's banking system, though.  New Orleans, like Dallas, New York, and several other cities, housed more than its share of regional banking headquarters.  Also, this would not work inside of a certain radius of ground zero - no phone lines = no debit cards.

But there's still enormous potential.  I know 2000 people huddled on the floor of the Lake Charles Civic Center tonight who'd love to have something like that.


"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

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#55 2005-08-31 20:56:12

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

I wonder about this whole levy thing. Is it a good idea? It can increase the areas we can live in but what are there probabilities of failure. How robust can they be made and what measures are in place for if they fail. I really can't gauge the whole cost benefit of them.

To understand the ultimate benefits of levees, you should look at what would happen without them.  New Orleans would go away immediately, of course, but wait long enough and so will Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, St. Louis, half of Chicago, most ports along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, a quarter of Kentucky's farmland, several small gulf coast and atlantic ports, etc.  Flooding would see to what land subsidence did not.  The US levee system is vast - much bigger than most people realize.  Its construction was the rural electrification of its day, and it has become one of the unseen backbones of our economy.

To the extent this is true, we simply must allocate the money needed to maintain that backbone in good condition and revise it to conform with better planning practices. MORE wetlands to absorb storm surges in the LA delta regions for example.

On a related not, I remember reading that a staggering quantity of top notch Midwest topsoil is dumped deep in the Gulf of Mexico each year because the levee system accelerates the water flow. Design more wetlands and that topsoil would accumulate in the Mississippi Delta region instead, to become fertile land in decades or centuries to come.

Deltas should grow, not shrink like they are doing today.


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#56 2005-08-31 21:08:55

clark
Member
Registered: 2001-09-20
Posts: 6,362

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Maybe it is the Californian in me... building codes.

The destruction is in large part the result of conditions exceeding the design tolerance of the system, right?

Ife are dealing with bigger, stronger, more numerous hurricanes, then we should mitigate the damage by planning our construction to meet a minimum level of standard to deal with such conditions.

Sloped roofs in areas where it snows. Houses that flex in an earthquake. Bomb shields in the age of crazy people and gunpowder.

Then of course there is the ever ready emergency kit.

It's moments like these that make me wonder what lessons we can learn to take to Mars (sorry to bring that *place* up here  tongue   lol )

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#57 2005-08-31 21:10:39

Trebuchet
Banned
From: Florida
Registered: 2004-04-26
Posts: 419

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Actually, I was thinking more of having these cards pay for gasoline and hotel rooms for people fleeing the storms, but yeah, they'll work wonders for people on the fringy regions too.

The phone lines won't be a problem with WiMax and voice-over-IP. I imagine that in a couple years setting up temporary phone service will be much quicker.

Believe it or not, small hurricanes actually tend to help local economies. They create construction booms. My (foolish? brilliant? ruthless?) brother is already sneaking around north of Lake Pontchartrain to gauge the local business potential for his contracting business. Many more will follow.

This would be the broken window fallacy. The money required to rebuild is all lost opportunity costs.

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#58 2005-08-31 21:15:43

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Maybe it is the Californian in me... building codes.

Pinko socialist! Quack!  8)


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#59 2005-08-31 21:22:51

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#60 2005-08-31 21:27:32

clark
Member
Registered: 2001-09-20
Posts: 6,362

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Yeah, and credit card food stamps is so conservative  tongue  lol

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#61 2005-08-31 21:42:30

Trebuchet
Banned
From: Florida
Registered: 2004-04-26
Posts: 419

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Yeah, and credit card food stamps is so conservative

Not food stamps. These cards would decentralize aid relief and disburse it to the hundreds of thousands of victims of a catastrophe who are the men and women on the spot making decisions to best save their lives and the lives of their families. It's spending less money smarter by bypassing the Big Monster Bureaucracy. What could be more conservative than that?

Anyways, do you have anything constructive to offer in terms of ideas, or are you content with being the self-appointed Conservative Thought Police today, just for a change of pace?

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#62 2005-08-31 22:14:59

clark
Member
Registered: 2001-09-20
Posts: 6,362

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

I think you misunderstand... I'm not really knocking your idea. But it is a glorified 'food stamp'. It's a form of aid that can be used under certain circumstances, which ostensibly allow individuals to determine how best to use the aid, within the constraints imposed upon the use of the aid.

Welfare, you get a check. Have fun, hopefully you spend it wisely. Food stamps are welfare of another sort, but you can only use it to buy food... supposedly. People still trade them for booze and cigs.

Now, this is not to imply that the credit card idea is a bad idea. It isn't. However...

In an emergency like this one, or one similar, it would make more sense, in my mind, to coordinate people and places. Team work through adversity. A bunch of individuals running around with cash in hand (or credit cards) is undirected and leads to situations where some areas are inundated and can't cope, and other areas where excess capacity exists.

If I had to shoot from the hip, first I would cut the whole charging people who are evacuating from a disaster (area) for hotel rooms right out. An emergency means people open up their homes, and their businesses to these people.

If you recall, during the plane shtdon after 9/11 a bunch of stranded Americans in Canada were put up in hotels, and then when those ran out, in peoples homes. If you ever go camping in the back woods, you run into the same kind of hospitality, especially when there is trouble.

So, hotels wouldn't get to charge people from these areas. They can get a piece of the aid distribution later. We will worry about that after we get things settled. Give them a tax ride off, whatever.

Gas? Sorry, emergency. We need to get people out of there. Fill up buses first. Then vans. Pack in strangers with one another. Sorry folks, going to have to get to know your fellow man. Talk about what just happened. Introduce yourself.

No one gets charged for the gas, and the companies get paid later. Uncle Sam is good for the IOU, just keep a receipt. Oh yeah, and the price freezes for the cost of all these things based on what the yearly average is for the commodity. Sorry, no price gouging during an emergency.

Food is distributed.

Of course, this is all during and immediately after the emergency. Some might recognize this as a form of martial law. Well, it kind of is. That's why we have martial law. There is nothing wrong with it when the situation actually warrants the need.

Following all this, government can compile a list of people who are "probably" going to receive federal aid from FEMA. Based on this list, the credit card companies can do what you are suggesting- However, again, price controls need to be in place to prevent individuals from being gouged.

But then, I live in an area where the price of an umbrella fluctuates with the precipitation. So I may just be bitter. lol

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#63 2005-08-31 22:33:31

Trebuchet
Banned
From: Florida
Registered: 2004-04-26
Posts: 419

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Coca-Cola once had a trial run where they had floating soda prices on their machines determined by a thermometer. They called it off because of monumental negative goodwill their company racked up. That and vandalism of the machines. But your umbrella situation is comparatively tame.

As for calling my idea a glorified food stamp, I believe you're missing the point: I'm not arguing that it isn't government funds, I'm arguing the specific spirit and intent behind them that differentiate the two. The disaster card is essentially a debit card charged to FEMA and is a convenience for simplifying stuff that the government would end up doing anyways. The government could and IMHO should handle the problem of people unable to afford food in a different way... although this isn't the time or place to discuss that particular political tar baby.

The main point of that FEMA card, though, is to get people *out* of the disaster area. If they've gone X miles and the hotels are full, charge up another tank of gas and keep going. It allows them to *instantly* disburse aid at the press of a button the second a state of emergency is declared. If I were in charge of implementing it, I'd build it into state drivers' licenses somehow... something like that.

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#64 2005-08-31 22:44:59

clark
Member
Registered: 2001-09-20
Posts: 6,362

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

I understand what you are getting at, and like I said, the idea has merit. However, things like gasoline become a scarce commidity when you have to evacuate the numbers we are seeing. If the use of the commodities are not controlled in some manner, then you end up with some people getting left behind because others have used it up as individuals.

I guess we are approaching the problem from two different ends- you want to enable the individuals to do for themselves. Hey, great! However, those individuals comprise a group, and I think the management of the situation (like these) is better handled through organization of the group.

I think this is a good start:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050901/D8CB76F02.html

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#65 2005-08-31 22:58:51

Trebuchet
Banned
From: Florida
Registered: 2004-04-26
Posts: 419

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Correct, and if you noticed, one of the other ideas I had was that the government pre-distribute evacuation plans in newsletters or fliers, telling people that if evacuation A is called people in this zip code should head up road X to locations Y and Z. Not everyone will follow this plan (because they have relatives somewhere that they plan to ride the storm out with, or whatever) but the percentage of people doing their own thing will probably cancel each other out, more or less.

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#66 2005-09-01 04:50:44

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

*And people needing their medications.  ::shakes head::  Most clinics and doctors' offices are probably flood-ravaged too.  All those folks walking away from the devastation who have or soon will run out of prescription medications for hypertension, edema, etc., and psychiatric conditions...if they don't have access to their physicians' medical records (and they won't), it'll be another hassle of gaining access to a doctor, demonstrating proof of medication necessity, getting more medication. 

An elderly couple were shown within the throngs of people walking away from New Orleans.  Both looked to be in their late 70s.  She was suffering; the heat, the walk, the humidity; such a look of agony on her face, as if she'd crumple any moment. 

That whateverdome in New Orleans has broken toilets, etc. 

People being relocated to Houston.  For what?  More being crammed together with strangers, jobs lost, lives completely disrupted. 

It's really unimaginable.  sad

I feel SO especially grateful for our home and what we have.  I wish those folks still had their privacy, comfort and security too.  :cry:

They're being called "refugees."  And seeing Americans walking amidst the devastation with whatever belongings they have crammed into boxes or clothes hampers...it's like a scene out of a 3rd world country. 

Did anyone see the news segment about a long washed-out bridge at the entrance of which is the only spot in that part of LA where cellphone calls can be made?  Somehow the signals are still working there.  The bridge that leads to nowhere is, ironically, a bridge to outside communication.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#67 2005-09-01 06:58:30

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

The nightmare worsens

sad 

Damn it!  sad

--Cindy

::EDIT::  New Orleans:  Before & After


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#68 2005-09-01 08:10:21

C M Edwards
Member
From: Lake Charles LA USA
Registered: 2002-04-29
Posts: 1,012

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

More Katrina fun:  My bank lost major network hubs in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.  My employer also uses the same bank.  The local hub is able to continue operating, but due to the intricacies of their deposit system there may be no payday tomorrow.  At least I can still make withdrawals.   :? 

There are no working ATM's on the east side of the state, though.


"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

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#69 2005-09-01 09:21:04

Yang Liwei Rocket
Member
Registered: 2004-03-03
Posts: 993

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Jumping to conclusions isn't scientific. The mere presence of climate change in no way indicates a direct human cause for it.

So, tell me why there is a global temperature rise on earth ?
Termits farts ?  big_smile

I'm waiting for YOUR arguments.

There were a number of papers which said the current administration is trying to stifle scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming in an effort to keep the public uninformed, some top NASA scientists said this. Of course, most of the folks that are biggest on Global Warming are against nuclear power, so this also causes problems but using an alternative power/fuel source might be the answer. University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz heads a group of eminent geologists which has just published a paper in The Guardian outlining its belief that the world is under serious threat of environmental destruction. President Vladimir Putin signed the protocol into law earlier , allowing it to take effect in 128 nations that ratified it, said U.N. environmental agency spokesman Eric Falt. The United States has still refused to join. Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" . Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science


People at NASA say Bush is trying to opress info on Climate change. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now," James E. Hansen told a University of Iowa audience.Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and has twice briefed a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming.Hansen said the administration wants to hear only scientific results that "fit predetermined, inflexible positions." Evidence that would raise concerns about the dangers of climate change is often dismissed as not being of sufficient interest to the public."This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster." NASA has showed us photos of the Polar caps melting at quickening rates. Scientists have often wondered what is causing this period of global climate change and a man made emissions of CO2 part of the problems ?Analysis revealed that during the last Ice Age, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were significantly lower than they were before mankind began polluting the atmosphere, let's say about 200 years ago. The greedy companies of the USA, with their oil burning may have cuased much trouble with the climate and produced costly oil spills, but soon by 2010 it will be India and China adding their industrial pollutants to the sky.

NASA's Space Flight Center has been finding that there is a less than a 2 percent chance that observed melting of arctic sea ice is the result of normal climatic variations and a much less than a 0.2 percent chance that melting over the last 46 years is the result of normal variations.There are those who support the idea of Global warming as the days that northern Alaska was cold enough to operate oil-drilling machinery without damaging them in the tundra may change for more profitable results. A NASA study recently used a computer climate model to simulate the last 50 years of climate changes and then project the changes over the next 50, they found out that if no emission reductions are made and they continue to increase at the current rate, global temperatures may increase by 1-2º Celsius (1.8º-3.6º Fahrenheit). There are also many who think that Arctic carbons might create many new Climate change scenarios, saying that if current warming trends in the Arctic continue, we can expect to see more of the old carbon now sequestered in northern soils enter the carbon cycle as carbon dioxide. This will act as a positive feedback, tending to enhance the greenhouse effect. NASA spacecraft have already found much melting in the polar ice caps, in the Arctic a satellites show a 3% reduction in ices.Hansen said the scientific community generally agrees that temperatures on Earth are rising because of the greenhouse effect — emissions of carbon dioxide and other materials into the atmosphere that trap heat. Hansen said such warnings are consistently suppressed, while studies that cast doubt on such interpretations receive favorable treatment from the administration. He also said reports that outline potential dangers of global warming are edited to make the problem appear less serious. "This process is in direct opposition to the most fundamental precepts of science," he said.


'first steps are not for cheap, think about it...
did China build a great Wall in a day ?' ( Y L R newmars forum member )

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#70 2005-09-01 10:03:59

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

We knew this could happen.

No plan ever made to help New Orleans' most vulnerable

> By LEONARD WITT
> Published on: 09/01/05

Each time you hear a federal, state or city official explain what he or she is doing to help New Orleans, consider the opening paragraphs of a July 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

The story continues:

"In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

The officials made those statements fully knowing that those 134,000 people were very likely to end up in dire circumstances or even die.

= = =

Blame is irrelevant.

Candid discussion about the proper role of the local, state and federal governments is what is needed.


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#71 2005-09-01 10:33:21

BWhite
Member
From: Chicago, Illinois
Registered: 2004-06-16
Posts: 2,635

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

National Geographic October 2004:

The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are.

and this:

A cocktail of natural and human factors is putting the coast under. Delta soils naturally compact and sink over time, eventually giving way to open water unless fresh layers of sediment offset the subsidence. The Mississippi's spring floods once maintained that balance, but the annual deluges were often disastrous. After a devastating flood in 1927, levees were raised along the river and lined with concrete, effectively funneling the marsh-building sediments to the deep waters of the Gulf. Since the 1950s engineers have also cut more than 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of canals through the marsh for petroleum exploration and ship traffic. These new ditches sliced the wetlands into a giant jigsaw puzzle, increasing erosion and allowing lethal doses of salt water to infiltrate brackish and freshwater marshes.

While such loss hits every bayou-loving Louisianan right in the heart, it also hits nearly every U.S. citizen right in the wallet. Louisiana has the hardest working wetlands in America, a watery world of bayous, marshes, and barrier islands that either produces or transports more than a third of the nation's oil and a quarter of its natural gas, and ranks second only to Alaska in commercial fish landings. As wildlife habitat, it makes Florida's Everglades look like a petting zoo by comparison.

Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows—scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to forge a radical plan to protect what's left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin.


Give someone a sufficient [b][i]why[/i][/b] and they can endure just about any [b][i]how[/i][/b]

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#72 2005-09-01 14:29:05

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

MS police officers saved by "death grip" on a spindly bush

*What a story.  Thank goodness it wasn't chopped down previously, as had been planned.  They held on for 5 hours. 

Mayor of New Orleans has issued an "Urgent SOS" -- city descending into anarchy.

Incomprehensible. 

And now a jam-packed ride aboard a bus packed like sardines to yet another massive shelter.  Their lives so completely disrupted yet rolling down the road seeing others' lives completely normal and sane.  It'd be utterly maddening.

--Cindy


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#73 2005-09-01 16:47:48

Fledi
Member
From: in my own little world (no,
Registered: 2003-09-14
Posts: 325

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Jeez, this is getting worse by the hour, I hope Josh's relatives are safe.

It makes me sad to see all the people loosing their homes and this with a dam that would have been finished and secure a few years later.
  sad

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#74 2005-09-01 17:06:52

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

The engineers have begun to collect the sandbags and supplies near to where they hope to secure the broken levy's. When this happens they can then start pumping water out.

But there is another tropical depression forming in the Atlantic this one is called LEE and it has the potential to follow the same course that Katrina had and cross florida to get powered up in Gulf of Mexico.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#75 2005-09-01 21:51:09

John Creighton
Member
From: Nova Scotia, Canada
Registered: 2001-09-04
Posts: 2,401
Website

Re: Katrina and New Orleans

Jumping to conclusions isn't scientific. The mere presence of climate change in no way indicates a direct human cause for it.

So, tell me why there is a global temperature rise on earth ?
Termits farts ?  big_smile

I'm waiting for YOUR arguments.

There were a number of papers which said the current administration is trying to stifle scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming in an effort to keep the public uninformed, some top NASA scientists said this. Of course, most of the folks that are biggest on Global Warming are against nuclear power, so this also causes problems but using an alternative power/fuel source might be the answer. University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz heads a group of eminent geologists which has just published a paper in The Guardian outlining its belief that the world is under serious threat of environmental destruction. President Vladimir Putin signed the protocol into law earlier , allowing it to take effect in 128 nations that ratified it, said U.N. environmental agency spokesman Eric Falt. The United States has still refused to join. Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" . Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science


People at NASA say Bush is trying to opress info on Climate change. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now," James E. Hansen told a University of Iowa audience.Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and has twice briefed a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming.Hansen said the administration wants to hear only scientific results that "fit predetermined, inflexible positions." Evidence that would raise concerns about the dangers of climate change is often dismissed as not being of sufficient interest to the public."This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster." NASA has showed us photos of the Polar caps melting at quickening rates. Scientists have often wondered what is causing this period of global climate change and a man made emissions of CO2 part of the problems ?Analysis revealed that during the last Ice Age, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were significantly lower than they were before mankind began polluting the atmosphere, let's say about 200 years ago. The greedy companies of the USA, with their oil burning may have cuased much trouble with the climate and produced costly oil spills, but soon by 2010 it will be India and China adding their industrial pollutants to the sky.

NASA's Space Flight Center has been finding that there is a less than a 2 percent chance that observed melting of arctic sea ice is the result of normal climatic variations and a much less than a 0.2 percent chance that melting over the last 46 years is the result of normal variations.There are those who support the idea of Global warming as the days that northern Alaska was cold enough to operate oil-drilling machinery without damaging them in the tundra may change for more profitable results. A NASA study recently used a computer climate model to simulate the last 50 years of climate changes and then project the changes over the next 50, they found out that if no emission reductions are made and they continue to increase at the current rate, global temperatures may increase by 1-2º Celsius (1.8º-3.6º Fahrenheit). There are also many who think that Arctic carbons might create many new Climate change scenarios, saying that if current warming trends in the Arctic continue, we can expect to see more of the old carbon now sequestered in northern soils enter the carbon cycle as carbon dioxide. This will act as a positive feedback, tending to enhance the greenhouse effect. NASA spacecraft have already found much melting in the polar ice caps, in the Arctic a satellites show a 3% reduction in ices.Hansen said the scientific community generally agrees that temperatures on Earth are rising because of the greenhouse effect — emissions of carbon dioxide and other materials into the atmosphere that trap heat. Hansen said such warnings are consistently suppressed, while studies that cast doubt on such interpretations receive favorable treatment from the administration. He also said reports that outline potential dangers of global warming are edited to make the problem appear less serious. "This process is in direct opposition to the most fundamental precepts of science," he said.

This is all very interesting but can we have some more numbers. 1-2 degrees over 50 years? 50 years is a very long time. And what is an alarming rate for icecap melting? How do we quantify that. P.S. I often wondered how they measure global temperatures. Does anyone know?


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