(no subject)

[eirias]

I've heard some speculation that global warming is the cause of the recent upswing in the number of major hurricane hits to the US. Apparently that's not the case. However, as common sense would suggest, it is possible that global warming will affect hurricane season in some way, and a recent article in Nature suggests that it already has, in that total power has increased over the last 30 years - but nevertheless the current/recent Atlantic activity, they say, is no more than one would expect from normal variation.

Further reading on hurricanes and on global warming in general for the curious (I'm looking at you, upsilon! :) ). Some of them are pretty old at this point, but I tried to pick things in reputable journals.

Knutson TR, Tuleya RE, & Kurihara Y. (1998). "Simulated increase of hurricane intensities in a CO2-warmed climate." Science, 279: 1018-1020.
Harman JR, Harrington JA, & Cerveny RS. (1998). "Science, policy, and ethics: Balancing scientific and ethical values in environmental science." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(2): 277-286. (This is a really great article!)
Nordhaus WD. (1993). "Reflections on the economics of climate change." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 7(4): 11-25.

Time to get my mind off the climate change train and on the getting to school on time train.

Comments

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Not that I don't buy global warming. But as you said, there is going to be some variation and you have to look at the long term patterns, not just the last 20 years.

[harleybitch.livejournal.com]

I agree with cognative, or atleast I do on some days. I mean dont get me wrong we are pretty much destroying the planet, but some of this stuff relates to long term weather patterns and some of it agrees with global warming theory. Either way I think this pattern of horrible natural disasters will continue for some time. My heart goes out to people in the affected areas, but there is this little voice in the back of my head that says 'you built a city under sea-level and used budget contractors to build levies around it-- what were you thinking?!'

[eirias.livejournal.com]

My heart goes out to people in the affected areas, but there is this little voice in the back of my head that says 'you built a city under sea-level and used budget contractors to build levies around it-- what were you thinking?!'

Well, as for the quality of the levees, I don't think we can actually fault N.O. for that - they had been awarded a grant to patch them up, IIRC, in 2004, that was rescinded. I don't have a link but a lot of people have been complaining about it and saying this is going to look pretty bad for Bush's administration.

But as for your deeper point about where the city is - a lot of people have been saying things like that, and it's true, and I don't deny that building a city on the Gulf Coast below sea level is stupid... but you have to keep in mind that nearly every place in this country is prone to some kind of natural disaster. The size of that problem seems smaller when it's a risk you live with every day. Just look at the progression in the Midwest from newbie ("the tornado siren went off?! everyone in the basement NOW!!") to moron ("ooh, another tornado, I think I'll go outside and watch!"). And before we castigate people for building in a particular spot I think it's important to come up with some metric for how much worse a given spot is than the others, and to keep in mind that nowhere is actually safe.

[harleybitch.livejournal.com]

This is a HUGE disaster. I am amazed that the levy breaking has done more damage then the hurricane. And perhaps more amazed that this has not happened before.

It is my hope that new orleans will be able to re-build perhaps this time better prepared for such a disaster. Some of the reports I have been hearing from people who are there discuss the contamination of the water-- a lot of people (and animals) died and those bodies are floating around the city, not to mention sewer overflow, etc. I am sure that this is also going to cause an increase in rats, mosquitos and other pests. As a result the whole city is going to have to be rebuilt. from top to bottom.

This morning on the radio they were bitching about lack of aid from other countries, price of gas, and whatnot in addition to discussing why some people didnt leave. Granted this is a biased portrayal, but amongst people who didnt leave you have: elderly, sick, and people who did not have a means of transport. 80% of the city evacuated which is amazing, a lot of those who stayed supposidly couldnt leave (although I am sure there is a fair number of stupid people who are kicking themselves about now.) In addition (and adding further incoherence) I am amazed that the president's response was to cut his vacation short by a day or two, it is crap. Even though I admit there is probably little that the guy can do, if he was in his office people would think he was doing SOMETHING. How can you be on vacation in the midst of such a disaster in YOUR HOME COUNTRY.

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel bad for the people there, they had nothing to do with planning the city. However, it seems NO was built in an very ill advised place. Humans seem to think they can (and should) inhabit wherever they please, even if it's not the best idea (I'm looking at you Phoenix).

I'm assuming that NO will be rebuilt 'bigger, stronger, better' as if slightly better levies will prevent this from happening again.

[kirin]

Well, it's not as if anyone ever said, "Hey, I've got a great idea; let's build a large metropolis in this utterly disaster-prone location." Presumably, the town originally started there because, as the intersection between the continent's longest river and the ocean, it looked like a great trading spot. And then it grew because they were right. At what point do you say "Nope, too many people here, too dangerous, please stop growing"? Or, better yet, "Sorry, we've re-assessed the dangers, please 500,000 of you move 80 miles north now". Um, yeah.

So, I'm not saying it's a good idea. But I haven't the foggiest clue how you'd ever prevent such things from developing.

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

The disaster in NO was largely thanks to the US Army Corps of Engineers and their attempts to tame the Mississipi and Atchafalaya rivers over the past half century or so. NO is built on silt deposits that compact over time; these are layed down by the normal flooding activity. However, since we prefer not to have our major cities flooded every year, the levees were built to keep NO generally drier and less prone to floods. Great idea in theory, except that this prevents the floods from depositing more silt, so the land that the city is built upon just sinks instead of getting new earth to be on top of. Worse, the silt that would have been deposited all over the delta is instead deposited in the channel; this builds up (just like at the base of a dam), which displaces more and more of the water, meaning that you have to keep making your levee taller and taller, leading eventually to having a large amount of water suspended significantly higher than the inhabited land around it; this has the nice bonus of increasing the potential energy of anything that might happen to break through or spill over the top of your levee. Just like a dammed river will eventually cut a path through the dam, nature will eventually win and your levee will fail; this was pretty much an inevitable certainty without Katrina, but extreme weather conditions vastly accelerated the issue. The result is a new Atlantis.

But it's even worse than that -- NO is not going to be viable long-term anyway, because as the Corps of Engineers has attempted to tame Mother Nature in the Mississipi Delta, they have caused the Mississipi to change course; the river's new preferred course will take it quite a ways away from all of the economic infrastructure that depends on being at the mouth of the river. D'oh!

John McPhee's The Control of Nature (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374522596/qid=1125598027/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2228170-9851029?v=glance&s=books) is strongly recommended reading and explains the situation much better than my little summary. (It's been about 12 years since I read it, so I'm a little fuzzy on some of the specifics.) In fact, all of his work is fairly excellent, from what I recall.

[eldan.livejournal.com]

"Great idea in theory, except that this prevents the floods from depositing more silt, so the land that the city is built upon just sinks instead of getting new earth to be on top of."

Thanks for the explanation. I had been entirely missing that point, and wondering how it was even possible to build a city below sea level in the first place.... Looking at as a city that has sunk since it was built, suddenly it all makes sense.

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Plus there's the joy of coastal erosion -- when the floods don't deposit fresh earth, the waters of the Gulf are free to eat away at the land... which of course diminishes the natural barrier between the sea and the city.

[upsilon.livejournal.com]

Well, admittedly, I didn't really mean to suggest that the last few years' hurricanes were due to global warming. If I did suggest that, I was being a bit sensationalist. It's ridiculous to say "Hurricanes are up 60% in the last five years! Must be global warming!"

What I did want to speculate on, and point out, was the easy possibility of this number of storms every year from now until whenever we get our global warming butts in gear. And I'm not a scientist, so maybe this speculation is too facile and not grounded enough in reality...

I'll try to check out those journals... erp. I'm not sure when. Or even, really, how, but I suspect my local librarian might be able to help with that...

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't mean to upbraid you! I just thought you specifically might be interested because you were the one that got me thinking about it. :) And because one of the things I like best about you is that, of my friends, you are one of the most prone to wonder something and then look it up.

If any of the articles look interesting in particular I'd be happy to send them on to you in pdf format, since I do have access.