More on Katrina

Long Beach and OSYC is no longer there...

Clayton

No Words....

I never imagined something so major could happen in the US, by a storm no less.

Imagine this, The same thing could happen next week in another spot or the same spot. We are just entering the active part of the season.

Yes, That's true. I remember reading, though, that the chances of taking a direct hit from a Hurricane are something like 1 in 1,000,000. Does anyone have any back up info for this?

The fact that this could happen again in a week is scary!

Be good,

About a century ago, the gulf coast of the US was hit very regularly. Then again during the 1920's and 30's. But that was a long time ago, so we forget. At least we have the great advantage of advanced warning. Accurate prediction is still elusive, though. I'm still bewildered that so many chose to ride out the storm instead of just leaving by any means available. It's like everyone forgot how wrecked So Fl was after Andrew. But then I did the same thing with Andrew back in '92. I had never been in a cat 4 'cane; I did'nt know any better. I'll never do that again! And we only got a couple of days warning with Andrew; they thought it would break up on Thursday but it was pounding us by Sunday.

All weather phenomena is cyclic. Some cycles are short, annually or by decades. Some cycles are centuries long. All seem most assuredly tied to solar activity cycles. This includes the small but steady rise in global average temperature seen over the last 400 years.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6270

It is likely that we find ourselves in the midst of an active tropical cycle that will last most of our lifetimes, as it did in our grandparents day. The next generation that lives in the lull will probably forget again. So the cycle continues...

Jimbo

Katrina has managed to shutdown one of the major fuel supply pipelines to North Carolina and the south.

Gas is sitting at $3.50 a gallon here, and the pumps are running dry. Talking to a friend who is a station manager, he said that the companies will not make any promises as to when the next deliveries will take place. Some stations have already closed up as the tanks have run completely dry.

Katrina is the first of the big 'global warming' hurricanes to come. There will more storms like this in the future.

Before you start ranting Rush Limbaugh quotes, go to the National Snow and Ice Data Center and see what REAL scientists say about global warming: www.nsidc.org

National Snow and Ice Data Center

You mean Rush ISN'T a real scientist?????? He is entertaining though!

Global warming has been with us for 400-500 years. Centuries ago, the Thames river froze year round for so long that many buildings were erected upon the ice(!). The earth, it is believed, has been emerging from a "little ice age" during that 400-500 years.

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

The warming observed within the 20th century falls onto that trendline.

Some people think that human activity, which is responsible for somewhere between .5 and 1.5% of the total 'greenhouse' gases estimated to be in the atmosphere, have caused this warming, and that this warming is therefore an industrial age phenomena. There are several real technical problems with this particular viewpoint, among them the rather poor correlation between the level of atmospheric greenhouse gases observed in the geological record and the estimated surface temperature corresonding to the respective time periods, the widely varying amount of natural greenhouse gases (variations which far exceed the total contribution of human activity), and lack of a clear understanding of how greenhouse gases actually behave in the real atmosphere(like the water vapor feedback problem), and the imperfect surface temperature estimations, based as they were on flawed data.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/922376/posts

This leads to very inaccurate mathematical modeling of these phenomena, which is OK as long as we are only theorizing and not trying to make important decisions based on such flawed models.

The cosmic ray thoery certainly correlates far better with the gelogical record.

http://tinyurl.com/9mufe

Many "real scientists" believe the greenhouse gas theory is not plausible.

http://tinyurl.com/axkzk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

Actually, even the "land usage change" theory is more plausible than the "greenhouse gas" theory.

http://www.discover.com/educators-guide/jan-04/guide3

The proponents of the greehouse gas theory tend to downplay the importance of volcanism even though such activity does produce climatologically significant amounts of both greehouse gases and particulates. This is yet another a big technical problem with this theory. The contribution of soot is yet another one.

If this theory were such a 'slam dunk', there would really be no room for debate. That is far from the reality. The reality is that as science learns more about climate, the greenhouse gas/global warming theory seems less plausible, not more.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=33083

This last one is long but VERY good. Here's a short quote:

"A great deal of global warming rhetoric gives the impression that science has established beyond doubt that the recent warming is mostly due to human activities. But that has not been established. Though human use of fossil fuels might contribute to global warming in the future, there’s no hard scientific evidence that it is already doing so, and the difficulty of establishing a human contribution by empirical observation is formidable. One would need to detect a very small amount of warming caused by human activity in the presence of a much larger background of naturally occurring climate change—a search for the proverbial needle in a haystack."

Jimbo

Jimbo,
That was really interesting! Thanks for taking the time to give us some background. I always figured it wasn't the slam-dunk that Algore said it was (sorry Al, I know if you hadn't invented the internet we wouldn't EVEN be able to be having this discussion!). I look forward to hearing more from both sides of the discussion but I think you are correct.......the evidence is too skimpy, and getting skimpier, to make drastic policy judgements that seem premature. To postulate that this is the first of the global warming hurricanes is ridiculous, it seems to me. Chicken little, Chicken little.......

Did you just seriously use a freeper forum thread as a reference?

I'd feel a lot better about it all if the correlation between sea levels and some global average of temperature were purely linear. Unfortunately, the sea level contribution from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can be highly nonlinear.

Nothing that I've posted so far contradicts this asssertion. It may well be true. We are in a period of global climate change wherein the earth is warming up. But then we have always been in a period of global climate change since the earth's climate has always been in a state of flux. The current warming trend may indeed lead to stronger tropical storms. Or maybe not. But either way there is little evidence that human activity is responsible for the climate change.

Jimbo

"Global Warming Hurricanes"

Where do you get this sh*t?

I'm sure the people who were affected by Camille would have loved to have known what global warming was and why it was blowing their homes all to hell.

What a bunch of tree-hugging alarmist bullcrap.

NO! Katrina was the FIRST of many Global Warming Hurricanes according to the earlier poster. When Camille whacked those poor people it wasn't important to anyone hoping to further their agenda. Sorry. While I'm on the subject, (sort of) I hate it when these people take a tragedy like this and try to further their race-baiting agendas as well. Can't you put that aside till we at least recover the sick and injured?!?!?

how bout those cat sailors eh?....

Katrina was a real tragedy. A region I was about to visit (and perhaps sail in), where friends and family live, is reduced to rubble. Far worse, people have died in what turned out to be a worse disaster than 9/11. Whether it was a fluke, or the beginning of a new era in caribbean climate, only time will tell. Either way, New Orleans will not be the same again, not for a long time.

If there has to be lefty finger-pointing, we shouldn't yet focus on speculation on global warming effects - which may prove true, but currently are speculation until Katrina becomes a regular occurrence. The real outrage is our nation's inability protect a major domestic metropolis from a Cat 4 hurricane. When both the Army Corps of Engineers and New Orleans Corps of Engineers were massively short-budgeted by the feds in 03 and 04 to help subsidize Iraq; when they decided that Cat 3 protection was sufficient because that's all they had funding for; and when a state's national guard is drafted into active military duty in a foreign country and not enough guardsmen are serving at home... THAT is an outrage.

The "war on terror" (or whatever it really is) isn't the only obstacle America faces. And for this reason, I DO blame this disaster at least partially on the Bush administration. They need to get their priorities straight.

Utah, Regardless of political views, or whether humans are influencing the global warming that is taking place,or if that impacted this storm, what gets me too, is that the government knew this was going to happen in N.O.(I refer to the flooding, and not this particular storm) All of them knew it was coming. The locals to the Feds of both parties. Typically, nobody in the government would own up and begin to take responsibility in the situation. Then to top it off, we, the United States couldn't muster a better evacuation? That is too pathetic! It is a crime. But that is the way so much of our business is conducted today. No thought of cosequence to others, only personal gain or loss. Maybe Katrina's wakeup call will do some good. I sure hope so! In contrast, I sure am proud of many Americans and their responses. Just look at those Teaxas City guys!

I think what it points out is that NO government can make us 100% safe.....EVER. The money that it would take to try would be unimaginable. More than I'm willing to give up in taxes, I know that. I hope Brian is right that this serves as a wake-up call but not that government needs to do more... rather that we have to not look to government to do EVERYTHING from cradle to grave. There are some things government (local, state, feds) must do but a hell of a lot of things it can't do very well. And that is Democrat, Republican, Left, Right, whatever..... Governments like ours is not a fast response entity. Nor is it very good at forecasting storms apparently.

Oh I love how this bit of drivel gets spilled on my lap. I'm trying to further MY agenda by shooting down some screwball environmental conspiracy theory?

My point about Camille (which is my dear Mother's name, btw) is that it was a much more powerful hurricane yet this one was the first of the "big bad super-kaboom global warming" hurricanes.

Please.

What's more interesting about this hurricane season is not necessarily Katrina, not to downplay its significance. It's the fact that we're up to hurricane Maria already (out in the Atlantic, not coming here). Tropical Storm Nate is on its heels. Fortunately, current conditions will keep those out to sea. For the last two years, the Annapolis to Oxford race was ruined by Isabel and Ivan, occuring in mid-September. "I" was awhile ago.

What is the farthest letter in the alphabet that hurricane names have gotten to in any season?

Mary,

Right off Hurricane Opal comes to mind. But they don't only name hurricanes so there are probably other T.S. systems that have been named after that.

Clayton

Yes, both tropical storms and hurricanes get named. See the links below for the NOAA forecast update for 2005 - first is the NOAA site, second is the update.

NOAA hurricane center
Storm Outlook for '05

Right. I should l have should have said, "named storms in the United States." Just wondered what is the farthest we have gotten in the alphabet.

This year's list ends with Wilma. I wonder what they will do if it goes beyond that. Maybe add Xavier, Yvonne and Zach? And then what do they do?

Well you fella's from somewhere else can speculate all you want about what happens here, but if you sit at home waiting for someone else to come take care of you then you're in the wrong place! Emergency disaster plans start at home and goes up from there. When the storm is comming you plan for your situation, whether you leave or stay you still need a plan. People say they should have taken those people out before, well look at how long it took when most were in one location. How about this situation, lets say all those people could have been evacuated before and lets say the storm took a hard turn to the east (Sorry Florida), then all those same people would be pissed that you made them leave for nothing. Its a no-win situation.

Compared to the last time they tried to evacuate most of the area, this one went off really good. Much improvement, but not enough planning overall. The one breakdown in the plan which the people themselves did not have any control over is the disaster plan on the city and state level. As a tiered system it should go like this: 1.) You take care of #1 first thats you, 2.) Help your neighbor if you can (thats community), 3.) Then it starts to go up the public ladder, Emergency prepardness plans for your area, 4.) The citywide Emergency Plan should plan for the infrastructure, 5.) The Parish (County for you guys outside of Louisiana) then takes care of things outside of the city, 6.) Then the State fills in from there, 7.) Finally the Feds come in when all else fails.

If you can't follow that idea, then you shouldn't be down here.

Hurricane Lilly came right over us 2 years ago and we sure didn't wait for someone to come over to help us!! We had no electricity or water for anywhere from a couple of days to a month. The relief efforts started at home and with help from others that volunteered (Thank God!) we got back on our feet. It just took time.

Now I'll get off that box and get back to work.

Peace,
Clayton

Mary,
Maybe they will have to start stuttering after AARON and BB (as in King). Next could be CCATHERINE

David
H20

Utah,
Maybe we should have had the cojones to ask Teddy Kennedy to give up some of his federal budget money for his Boston "Big Dig" the most expensive 7.5 miles of highway in the world. Some of that could have been allocated to New Orleans. There is always a finger to point somewhere. Did I just hear The Rev. Jesse say that Katrina was a racist plot of Repulicans to rid New Orleans of poor black people who so reliably vote democratic?

Would that liberals especially take a deep breath (you should read the sound bites coming out of DC by liberals already. Stuff happens and people screw up. One could examine the activities of the mayor and govenor in the crisis, for example. I would never want to trust the Feds to do everything right in order to save me, but maybe that's just the way I was raised. Ultimately we are better our own keepers and our brother's than the Feds (or state/local governments) are.

Just my humble $.02
Peace,
David
H20

Here's a bit of moderate discussion. I like National Geographic because they do a good job of focusing on the science without regard to politics. Just facts. This was written last year...

Interesting read...

Of course, a little financial responsibility and the money would have been there anyway. You can have my tax cut.

Sound bites are coming from all angles - so far we've heard gays and gay marriage and abortion as the reasons we've been so punished. And all those people should have had cars so they could get out. Now that the federal response has seen to be lacking, the fingers are pointed at the victims themselves. Whatever.

Looking back over pictures of damage done by Isabel (just a tropical storm then) to the Chesapeake Bay area, I can't fathom the destruction from this storm. I suspect that the pictures don't tell the whole story. It's easy for the rest of us to look at it from afar and armchair quarterback it and put our own political spin on it. To say you just need to rely on yourself in these circumstances... Say that to the local gov't whose entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Even at the state level, the ability to handle these sorts of disasters, when your own state is the one devastated, is limited. I pride ourselves on being a nation that can do just about anything, and that is due to our resourcefulness and teamwork. And teamwork means we should be able to rely on each other when the shi* hits the fan.

To hear some people, you'd think that what happened was a complete surprise. Who expected a levee to fail? Only anybody who had paid attention, those predictions were not exactly secret. The hospital ship is leaving Baltimore for there. I'm proud we have that resource as a nation, it's not something Biloxi could do for themselves. It will take awhile to get there. It should have already been underway.