Not nice to fool with Mother Nature

Ever since 2002, when I saw this frightening edition of PBS' Now with Bill Moyers, I have been saying to myself that I must get to New Orleans before it is wiped away by a hurricane.

A few weeks ago, NOW showed how the coastline of Louisiana is crumbling and washing away because of human actions. As the barrier that protects New Orleans from the stormy Gulf of Mexico continues to vanish, the risk that a hurricane could drown the city gets worse every single year.

Watching the mandatory evacuation this morning on the news, I am kicking myself for not acting on that desire to get there sooner. Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on the city, which is vulnerable not only because of its low-lying situation, but also because years of environmental degradation has destroyed its natural defences.

It occured to me at the time of the Now documentary that I had never seen any commercial broadcaster report on the potential catastrophe facing the city, one the Red Cross has rated as the worst possible to affect the United States.

Much worse than any terrorist attack.

Imagine if the corporate media had put a fraction of the focus on the environment and New Orleans instead of the so-called War on Terror. Perhaps political pressure would have been brought to bear to remedy the situation.

But no.

And let me remind you: The hard-hitting Now is only a shadow of its former self, thanks  to the Bushie appointees who ensured that, after Moyers' retirement, the show would suffer journalistic castration.

But hey, who needs public broadcasting right? Feed them Paris Hilton cake.

I am praying for New Orleans. I hope one day to be able to eat softshell crab salad and listen to the Iguanas while drunk at some unholy hour in some wild bar. But right now, I am fearing the worst. When even the CNN reporters are talking about getting out of town, you know it's bad.

Oh, and memo to the White House which wants to ditch a proposal to put ''respect for nature'' on the agenda at next month's United Nations summit on povert and U.N. reform ...?

Nature has a way of commanding respect. Even from you.

Comments

[M-J Milloy]

Wise men once sung: "New Orleans is sinking and I don't wanna swim."

I'd also suggest that the threat to the North American "culture of life" (heh) posed by H5N1 influenza ("bird flu") outpaces anything that Boogeyman Bin Laden has dreamt up. (And big ups to El Corazon for the recent coverage of the incipient bird flu pandemic.)

You can't outrun natural selection.

[Dana]

Mighty wind. Maybe the anti-climate change crowd will pay attention but I wouldn't bet on it.

What will get their attention will be what happens to the rigs, super tanker ports, petroleum reserve facilities all along the gulf coast.

The city and the people, yeah sure but what about the oaaahl!

If the storm doesn't significantly weaken or change course N'Awlins may be little more than a memory come Tuesday. I'm sorry I never got there too.

[sheena]

While I sincerely doubt that Gord Downie is the Nostradamus of our generation, I am terrified for NOLA tonight. I still have nightmares about being stuck on I-10 in 2002 for Hurricane Lily. Things were known to be very precarious even then, and my plan to ride it out was vehemently ixnayed by friend who had experienced full on hits in FL and TX.

[Neil]

Every now and then Mother nature will rise up and let all of us know SHE is still in charge of this place called earth......

[Jiminy C.]

Was supposed to go take in Nawlins a few years with a lovely lady who appreciated Montreal, Quebec City and all things francophone in style -- she unhappily couldn't make it.
Decided to go solo -just to taste the ambiance - even without a partner - Madame Z - well worth the commitment!
You know Montreal - St. Catherines, Crescent Street, Old Montreal - maybe you know Quebec City - Grand Allee - they don't compare - much more suave - but Nawlins has the ambiance but with a garish Midway swirl added to it!

[sheena]

follow up thought... if you're into softshell, go for Maryland, not Louisiana....

[Ivan Prokopchuk]

While I first thought you were going to take your cues
from watching TV, I winced--here we go again, the columnist is running out of gas, she's going to write about things, on TV, things the neighbour said, things the dog did, cutting grass, the usual Binwood Snarkely stuff.
But no. NOT NICE TO FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE goes beyond blogging to something like PEABODY candidacy and the almost furious attack on GOP anti-environmentalist policy while lamenting for the old sounds and smells of
New Orleans.
I thing "She" heard you.
The hurricane is veering away.
--Ivan Prokopchuk

[Bill-Muskoka]

There is always San Antonio's River Walk. Great jazz and food. The Big Easy is probably going to be gone for a while. The should have hired the Dutch to build the levees and dikes, eh?

[Tom Gray]

The media hype about this hurricane was both excessive and expected. I read an article on the CNN website this morning that spoke of predictions of a chemical catastrophe as storage tanks broke free in the followed. The city would be covered with a mixture of toxic chemicals. As gasoline storage tanks disintegrated there would be uncontrollable fires burning throughout the city.

This all came from CNN, which is supposed to be a responsible news organization and not a sensationalist tabloid. Other news organizations spoke of New Orleans being uninhabitable for weeks or longer and the oil industry in the Gulf shut down.

This morning watching the 24 hour news channels, I heard disappointment in the voices as they discovered that the damage was not of the apocalyptic magnitude that they had predicted. That did not prevent them from showing their animations of flooding engulfing New Orleans . They had to express surprise that the French Quarter had been spared but could fall back on reports of flooding in the eastern potion of New Orleans.

I suppose that this all points out that the news media is not about news; it is about entertainment. The reporting of an event even as potentially catastrophic as a category 5 hurricane has to be presented as if it was the latest summer special effects movie.

[Tom Gray]

In respect to the comment "Mighty wind. Maybe the anti-climate change crowd will pay attention but I wouldn't bet on it", the scientific consensus is that global warming will have an insignificant and immeasurable effect on both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

This does have an interesting political angle since it led to the resignation of the hurricane expert from the IPCC. The IPPC chair (IPCC - international panel on climate change – a UN organization that is taking the lead on global warming) made a speech in which he identified himself as the IPCC chair and then made scientifically unsupportable comments about global warming causing more intense hurricanes. When the hurricane expert on the IPCC requested that he withdraw these comments as being without scientific basis, the chair refused saying that these were his personal opinions and not those of the IPCC. However his IPCC role was used in the introduction to the speech an he referred to the IPCC in it himself. Because of this, the hurricane expert saw that this had become a political and not a scientific issue, and so withdrew from the IPCC. The scientific consensus is that global warming will have either no or an immeasurably small effect on hurricane intensity.

[Huge Seagull]

More info in this article:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1282151.html

[Dana]

Tom Gray, it's probably more accurate to say that climatologists opinions are still fairly divided.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=140

http://www.ucar.edu/communications/staffnotes/0410/hurricane.html

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/abruptclimate_curryr.html

[Tom Gray]

With respect to hurricane frequency and intensity, the scientific consensus is that there is no increase. As I pointed out before, this has led to the resignation from the IPCC of the expert on hurricanes. There are some politically attractive conjectures but these conjectures lack evidence. The URLs provided above are very clear in this regard. Opinion is not evenly divided.

Now I know what will happen, there will be a need for more evidence of the harm caused by global warming. So hurricanes will be brought into the picture. When it is pointed out that there is no empirical evidence for the proposition, the 'precautionary principle' will be brought out to fulfil its function. The newspapers and 24 hour news channels will point out that finding no evidence does not mean that there is no evidence and so just to be sure, we should assume that there is evidence and that it is all biased in one direction. When people point out that there is no evidence, they will be lumped together with a disparaging appellation and be said that they do not ‘pay attention’.

Perhaps before we do such things the media and the rest of us should make sure of our own evidence and not make recommendations that are not supported by empirical evidence despite how politically attractive the hypothesis is.

[Dana]

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/ap_050731_hurricanes_stronger.html

[Antonia Z.]

Okay, can we knock off the ''is to'' ''is not'' commentary and get back to the topic? This was coming down the road. The corporate media ignored it. Now they're playing it like another disaster movie.

Thanks you,

Antonia
Who endured both Hurricane David and Frederick during a very wet and wild Caribbean vacation in August 1979.

[JM]

It comes as no surprise that both Moyers and AZ got the wrong end of the stick. If there was any 'respect for nature' New Orleans wouldn't even be there. It is only decades of channeling, dam-building, levee heightening, and the installation of massive electrical pumps that allowed New Orleans to survive even into the _20th_ century. All of this construction was, and is, of course, courtesy of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

[Antonia Z.]

I would love to believe that what you write is correct, JM. But the truth is, had Katrina stayed Cat. 4 or 5, it would have been game over.

I for one am glad the city seems to be standing, and am very sorry for the people of Biloxi.

[Antonia Z.]

I take that back. New Orleans is now in it very very deep.

[Antonia Z.]

Oh, and be sure to click on the track back on this post to see how the Bushies cut funding that would have helped avert this disaster.
http://www.grandinite.com/2005/08/29/flashback-did-bush-slash-funding-for-new-orleans/

[sheena]

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

Quote:
2:01 P.M. - Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard says there is no plumbing and the sanitary situation is getting nasty. He told WAFB-TV that he is carrying around a bag for his own human waste.

[Dana]

A contingent of the National Guard, of which there is apparently sufficient even though late in getting there, might be arriving in time to evacuate the people in the Superdome and some of the other evac centres before they too fill up.

What's happening is as bad and maybe even worse than some of the worst case scenarios presented. I haven't heard of any of the chemical plants breaking up yet and that's maybe the only bright spot.

[sheena]

Two of my homies are in the Superdome as of today. Many of the downtown hotels which survived the storm are now uninhabitable after the flooding. Will get gory details as soon as the authorities clear out them out. Check this space in a month or two.