In a September 2 article headlined “Government Saw Flood Risk but Not Levee Failure,” The New York Times printed without challenge President Bush’s false claim, originally made on ABC’s Good Morning America, that “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees” surrounding New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, dozens of news organizations had reported on the possibility of a breach well in advance of the hurricane, and even the Times’ lead editorial in the same day’s newspaper flatly stated that “[d]isaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees.”
So here’s the thing: If he or his administration really didn’t know about the possible breach, we should get rid of them and put people who do know in power. If he did know, then he is lying through his teeth. Either way, he should be removed. Someone call Pat Robertson. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m blown away by the lack of compassion shown by our government. What happened to the “best and brightest”? It’s become obvious over the past few years that we have elected the worst, most uncaring, money-hungry, irresponsible group of leaders this country has ever seen.
Helicopters and vans are being used to transport expensive equipment from the flood zone before evacuating humans.
And one of the stupidest things I see in every time of crisis in the U.S. is airlines offering to re-route frequent flyer miles to victims. Yes, you can donate your frequent flyer miles to the people in need. So, the airlines have seats on flights that would otherwise go empty unless a victim has frequent flyer miles to use? Can’t they just give them the fucking seat?
So what can we do to prevent this sort of thing from happening?
Don’t elect idiots and greedheads to the most powerful authority positions in the country.
The mainstream media, searching for something or someone to blame for this tragedy, has been quick to jump at global warming as a possible cause for this devastation. Of course, global warming is causing some negative effects on our natural environment, but it is not to be blamed for this disaster.
The catastrophic destruction that has occurred in the central Gulf coast of the United States due to Hurricane Katrina is occupying our thoughts. This calamity will consume enormous time and cost to recover from and to provide as much protection as possible from the inevitable next hurricane of this magnitude in this region and elsewhere. This is a sad time.
However, little time has passed before the disaster is being blamed by some of the media on global warming (see, for example, articles in The Belfast Telegraph and the Los Angeles Times. This narrow perspective completely misses the real reason for this disaster. As we, and others, have discussed (see Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2000: Discussion Forum: A broader perspective on climate change is needed and Pielke Jr. et al. 2005: Hurricanes and global warming), the significant risks are due to crossing thresholds in our vulnerability to environmental threats of all types. In this case, construction of towns on the immediate coastline and of a city below sea level (New Orleans) makes these regions particularly vulnerable to hurricanes.
The media have almost universally ignored an accurate description of the spectrum of human forcings on climate as presented in the National Research Council 2005 rporet.
Click for Video Remember when I posted videos? August has been an extremely busy, hot month here in NYC. I’ve had apparitions, inspirations, visitors from Indiana (twice), and have started 3 new projects, all of them somehow related to video. 2 of them work-related, 1 of them not.
Life is as it is, and always has been, but will not be forever. As the insane person I met Saturday said as he rolled me a homemade menthol cigarette, some day the god that lives behind the sun will come back for all this iron.
Technote: Switched to MT 3.2 and like it. New comment-spam reduction tools very well designed. Interface prettier, more intuitive. Complaint: It takes an extra click to edit template modules now that they are in their own special area. But since I don’t edit them that often it’s no big deal.
Evacuation choppers in New Orleans are being loaded both with injured and sick refugees, and also with expensive medical equipment from the hospitals. Instead of more refugees, they are using the space in the helicopters to save the equipment from looters. The chopper pilot said the hospital authorities told her to do so.
In a new article “Disaster Engineering” by Kevin Matthews for Architecture Week, some good reasons are given for not building a city under sea level on the coast of a sea, building “green”, and taking responsibility for our environment (natural and otherwise)…
An individual hurricane is an act of nature. How tragically ironic that just as the United States is reeling from Katrina’s awful smash, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is working to strike the words “respect for nature,” among others, from a harmless listing of the world’s basic values (Economist.com).
At the same time, much of the death and destruction from Hurricane Katrina is human induced, or at least enhanced, rather than strictly natural. Societal decisions of where and how to build, where to barge and drill, where to channel, dam, straighten, and pump can have disastrous local and regional impacts. For instance, the latest scientific research (Nature 436, 1071, 25 August 2005), suggests that coral theft offshore was a significant contributor to the severity of local damage from the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
In a new article “
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