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drwexI'm really sick and tired of the obsession over hurricane Katrina. Nonstop updates, speculation, dire predictions. Enough already.
Let me first say that I love the city of New Orleans; I was lucky to be there for a few days earlier this year, once again and though it's gone downhill (into mass commercialization) compared to 10 years ago when I was there before I still think it's a great city to visit. I'll be sad to see it damaged, though I don't believe it'll be destroyed.
I'm also very sorry for the people who've had to evacuate and for the likelihood that they'll return to destruction and loss.
But that said... people seem to be losing sight of two things that I think ought to put this storm into perspective. One: this isn't the first Cat4 (or 5 or 3 or whatever it is this very second) storm to hit the US this season and I don't think I'd lose money by betting that it won't be the last. The situation sucks just as much if you're in the Florida panhandle, or Atlantic coast, or wherever when one of these massive storms slams in and wipes out your life, livelihood, childhood home, or whatever. Yes, New Orleans is a magical city, but I don't think it means more to the people who grew up there than homes do to people all along the coast who've had them wiped out by hurricanes this year or last. A misery contest is just stupid.
Second, the fact that we've had this many powerful storms isn't an accident. They're referred to as forces of nature and in one sense they are, but hello, we (humanity and particularly the industrialized United States) have been fucking up Nature for the past, oh, hundred and fifty years at least. Hurricanes are one of the major ways that (excess) heat is transferred from the hot tropical regions to the cooler northern regions. Anyone stop to ask why the hell there's so much excess heat to be transferred? Nope, just turn up the AC in your SUV and applaud the government being owned by the carbon industry. To a first approximation you can model the Earth's atmosphere as a heat pump. When you add energy to a heat pump it runs faster and with more extreme cycles. Hotter hots and colder colds.
Meanwhile people blither and dither about climate change - I'm sure I'll get plenty of response comments from the deniers who, as far as I can see, are in the same position as those denying that smoking causes cancer. OK, fine. If you won't do anything about the sources of the problem (and, frankly, it's unclear to me that any of us individually can, at this point) then that's your prerogative. But please don't get sanctimonious about this because as far as I can see there's a direct line from A to B and it's pissing me off.
If there wasn't any risk to actual human beings I'd be sitting here wallowing in the schadenfreude of the fact that Katrina is going to pound the crap out of refinery row.
Let me first say that I love the city of New Orleans; I was lucky to be there for a few days earlier this year, once again and though it's gone downhill (into mass commercialization) compared to 10 years ago when I was there before I still think it's a great city to visit. I'll be sad to see it damaged, though I don't believe it'll be destroyed.
I'm also very sorry for the people who've had to evacuate and for the likelihood that they'll return to destruction and loss.
But that said... people seem to be losing sight of two things that I think ought to put this storm into perspective. One: this isn't the first Cat4 (or 5 or 3 or whatever it is this very second) storm to hit the US this season and I don't think I'd lose money by betting that it won't be the last. The situation sucks just as much if you're in the Florida panhandle, or Atlantic coast, or wherever when one of these massive storms slams in and wipes out your life, livelihood, childhood home, or whatever. Yes, New Orleans is a magical city, but I don't think it means more to the people who grew up there than homes do to people all along the coast who've had them wiped out by hurricanes this year or last. A misery contest is just stupid.
Second, the fact that we've had this many powerful storms isn't an accident. They're referred to as forces of nature and in one sense they are, but hello, we (humanity and particularly the industrialized United States) have been fucking up Nature for the past, oh, hundred and fifty years at least. Hurricanes are one of the major ways that (excess) heat is transferred from the hot tropical regions to the cooler northern regions. Anyone stop to ask why the hell there's so much excess heat to be transferred? Nope, just turn up the AC in your SUV and applaud the government being owned by the carbon industry. To a first approximation you can model the Earth's atmosphere as a heat pump. When you add energy to a heat pump it runs faster and with more extreme cycles. Hotter hots and colder colds.
Meanwhile people blither and dither about climate change - I'm sure I'll get plenty of response comments from the deniers who, as far as I can see, are in the same position as those denying that smoking causes cancer. OK, fine. If you won't do anything about the sources of the problem (and, frankly, it's unclear to me that any of us individually can, at this point) then that's your prerogative. But please don't get sanctimonious about this because as far as I can see there's a direct line from A to B and it's pissing me off.
If there wasn't any risk to actual human beings I'd be sitting here wallowing in the schadenfreude of the fact that Katrina is going to pound the crap out of refinery row.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-30 06:23 am (UTC)I have been close to civil defense and media preparations for hurricanes. Katrina was a rare emergency because of the difficulty of evacuating New Orleans; intense coverage is appropriate when so many lives are at stake, and (literally) there are no minutes to spare in getting people out. For the population outside the affected region, the Katrina story was more relevant than most hurricanes because of the scale of the cultural and economic effects. And I write this as someone with no connection to New Orleans, but who lost a structure of personal significance in the 2004 Florida storms.
I believe that living in New Orleans is a foolish choice. I like John McPhee's writings about mankind's stubborn effort to build habitations in geologically unsafe locations. People just don't think in geological time, and they extrapolate future safety from a personal experience of past safety. It seems to be a gut-level instinct. When I worked with particle accelerators, I found that people were cautious for the first two weeks; when they didn't start glowing in the dark during the first fortnight, they lost respect for the hazards of the device. Bad instinct for rationally responding to low-frequency high-consequence dangers.
Speaking of geological time, the Atlantic hurricane basin shows significant cyclic behavior on the level of decades. The storm lull during the 70's and 80's encouraged lots of stupid coastal development, because people only seem to remember what they've personally experienced. Recent storm activity would be expected from natural variations, and should come as no surprise to anyone. I can't think of a more respected expert on hurricanes than Dr. Gray:
NY Times article on hurricanes
Global warming, of course, is a bad thing. And people ignore global warming for precisely the same reason that they flock to the Gulf coast -- a habit of thinking about risks on the order of 1-10 years, not 10-100 years. I'm not saying that global warming should be tolerated, or that it won't cause an increase in the severity of hurricanes ... just that the normal ocean cycles are more varied than recent experience suggests.