Katrina Not Natural

June 1992 when leaving for The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the 41st U.S. President, George Herbert Walker Bush ( George "Dubyuh" Bush's dad) reportedly proclaimed;-
"The American way of life is not on the table for negotiation,"

Talk about short-sighted arrogance! There is a good old saying that goes;-

"As you sow, so shale ye reap".

Hurricane's Katrina,Rita & Stan were no natural disasters, but rather the Mother Nature's / Gaia's / The Lord God's lesson to an arrogant people. In the great cosmic order, if those places that bore the hurricane's fury had still been in their pristine natural state, there would have been no damage beyond a spots of temporarily additional wildness, whence the environment had previous evolved for such accommodations. The disaster in this case is all man made, including good evidence that Katrina's fury in some small portion (at least), is a sampling of the Global Warming dividend.

"...... the truly astonishing "storm of the decade" took place in March 2004. Hurricane Catarina -- .... -- was the first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history.

Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event; sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depressions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic Equator" for details of the Global Warming conection see AlterNet article Has the Age of Chaos Begun?

The misery and mess in the Gulf States of the USA's Deep South, has everything to do with false economies, personal selfishness and social hypocrisy being the communities guiding principals. As a quick mental experiment just imagine how much more inclusive and prudent the;- environmental management, urban planning, civil & social engineering, disaster preparations & response would have been if , the area was populated & controlled by a community of Dutch folk. Far more of the Netherlands is below sea-level, but the society thence the government is focus on their environmental responsibility, along with the impacts & lessons that necessitates for the society as a whole.

There can be no better illustration of this than New Orleans' pathetic strategy to cope with hurricanes. Not that such an event was unexpected as hurricanes have regularly threated the city for yonks. First however a quick refresher of the hall-marks of good design ( al la the responsible European tradition) is in order here (especially for those readers in the USA who seem so unfamiliar with these concept.);-

Any system is only as strong as the weakest link. The practical implication being that engineering critical systems one builds for the worst case scenario. Once having determined the maximum stress your product will be subjected to, one then provides enough strength to handle that and a little more so you have a safety margin just in case you had been a little optimistic in framing worst-case scenario. Hurricane forces are classified into categories one to five (5 being the strongest). Thus following our first principal, prudent design dictates that whatever you build in this situation must be capable of surviving at least the worst case of a category five hurricane. So why by any stretch of insanity where the levies in New Orleans ONLY designed to survive a category three storm! At least in English law, such sloppy workmanship would be ruled as a clear case of criminal negligence!

When dealing with unknowns, or possible risks of failure, include redundancy in the design. Traditionally in the Netherlands they do not build one dike (levy) between themselves and the sea but rather three. This is so if the first one fails they have a back-up to keep them safe, and in the unthinkable that the back-up fails there is still the third that may yet prevent a disaster. So how many levies where between the good people of New Orleans and the threatening sea? A measly under-engineered one! That is not real protection, that is only some promoter or officials public-relation exercise of cynical false security!

My initial reaction to rumours on the web of the New Orleans' plans for dealing with hurricane Katrina was 'that is too stupid for words, it has got-to-be yet another groundless conspiracy theory'. But then you had a laissez-faire evacuation plan by privately owned vehicles dependant that folks' had the cash & connection to pull-off such an escape. As one blogger noted "The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out". Then to maliciously grease the public-image machine they designated refuges for those who couldn't get out. If the city did flood everybody knew it would take days at least before there was any chance of responding to the problem. So who where the callous imbeciles (as clearly demonstrated by their gross inaction), that didn't consider that there would be a need for supplies of food, clean-air & water to the thousands in the shelters. While on the subject who are the moronic cowards that didn't schedule any (let alone sufficient) emergency staff, medical & police to guarantee the safety of poor folk that entrusted themselves to the government shelters!

I'm sad & sorry for the God-loving Lefties that have suffered in Katrina's wake. However for the rest of the USA it is now time for some serious deep and painful soul searching. Since President Bush fessed up to his Katrina failings, George has now promised to rebuild New Orleans. An all too easy measure of the President's sincerity will be IF the rebuilding of the levies are up to world's best practice;- two rows of levies at least (3 being better) all the way around any low ground, all levies rated stronger than "5" the strongest hurricane rating, all levies higher than projected rise in sea levels from global warming, plus that from any storm surge (add about three metres extra ontop of Katrina's high watermark! ) Since Katrina's rampage it has been confirmed that the old failed flood defences of New Orleans where only one fiftieth ( 2 %) of the equivalent required for such locations by current world's best practice (Dutch law)!!

>Entanglements: Uncle Sam's Days of Energy Woes.