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GEOTHERMIAN SHUNS SCIENCE
Just like Maine fourth-graders, Tim Flannery believes hurricanes are caused by global warming:
Interviewer: Do you think it’ll take another major catastrophe like New Orleans before we react appropriately?
Flannery: I don’t know what other disaster you’d have to have happen. We’ve had that European summer that killed thousands of people, Hurricane Katrina and that incredible hurricane season as a whole and the intensity of hurricanes increasing worldwide ...
Hey, Perfesser; science says no. Via the Hoofster, who writes:
Ever since I heard the link I was hoping for something more solid than the weak associations I was hearing about on NPR and other news sources. It seemed very preliminary, and a bit worrisome that, especially in the foreign press, that they were claiming things like the New Orleans/Katrina disaster was the first example of a global warming disaster. The evidence simply wasn’t conclusive and in general in science, results need to age. It’s like cheese or wine, you wait for the results that get better with time, and you have to be patient.
Flannery isn’t the patient type.
The only reason people care about Hurricane Katrina is because New Orleans was affected. Nola is the decadent artist-hanger-on’s favorite playground (even if—especially if—they’ve never been there), and the idea that it was a real location subject to the real forces of nature was too much for their tiny minds to bear.
The truth of the matter is 1) most of the destruction directly caused by Katrina happened to the less cool coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, which is full (to the hanger-ons) of “rednecks,” and 2) the flooding of New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen, and could have happened any time. New Orleans is mostly below sea level. The flooded areas have always been below sea level, long before “global warming” was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. Furthermore, the levee was rotting, and if Katrina hadn’t given it a push it would have eventually just gone on its own. The flooding happened while everyone was talking about how relieved they were that New Orleans had sustained so little damage from the hurricane. Of course no one talks about that.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 06 16 at 08:40 AM • permalinkFor goodness sake flannery, FUCK OFF!!!!!
Posted by surfmaster on 2007 06 16 at 08:58 AM • permalinkSome Imus’s Bernie McGuirk New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin impressions, from 2006 http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.nagins.ram
Some of his finest work.
Flannery: I don’t know what other disaster you’d have to have happen. We’ve had that European summer that killed thousands of people...
Mere et Pere died because there was nobody around to pour ‘em a glass of ice water or install an air conditioner. They were all sur la plage.
Pretty ironic that the supposedly hated McDonald’s restaurants (air conditioned and serving ice water) rescued as many French oldsters as they did. Yanks to France’s rescue once again.
#3
Surfie, that’s not going to happen. Not since his elevation to Weather God.Me? I’m a great believer in weather.
Whether it’s getting warmer or not, there aint a lot we can do about the weather. Or the climate for that matter. We’ll weather it, and so will the planet. It’s been around for a very, very long time and coped tolerably well with everything.2006 was a bad hurricane year for Australia, and a nonexistent hurricane year for the US. How to explain this, if global warming is intensifying everything? Shouldn’t everybody everywhere be experiencing increased lashing at the same time? Or is it just normal weather variances that have been going on since the beginning of weather?
The flooded areas have always been below sea level, long before “global warming” was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye.
Exactly right, Andrea. That’s why Uncle Sugar spent hundreds of millions of dollars to install huge pumps that kept water from seeping into NOLA during normal conditions.
The level of hysteria that Katria continues to generate unto this very day amazes me. Of course, much of that is from self-promoting scam artists like Flannery, and eagerly sought out by people who worship doom mongering scenarios, but there’s enough genuine panic amongst the artsy, folksy types to fill the gaps.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 06 16 at 10:44 AM • permalinkLet’s be frank, the major reason New Orleans generated so much angst and hysteria is that it’s primarily a black city. Anything that disproportionately affects blacks in the US is automatically a greater tragedy, and whitey’s fault. You know the old joke about the NYT’s headline for the end of the world - “World Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit”. You had a staggeringly stupid black mayor and a dithering woman governor - no way in hell they were getting blamed for their fiasco. Gotta be Global Warming and evil Rethuglicans.
Looks like this needs to be updated.
Rebecca: Short O/T. I posted Detective Paco’s birthday late on a now obsolete thread, but I wanted to make sure you see it because you inspired it with your comment about Sheila and the birthday cake.
He believes he needs to go over the top..
Well excuse my cynicism. I once knew Dr Flannery, (he was a colleague of a daughter) back when he was a grown-up, and I recall that he is a paleontologist, not a paleoclimatologist. Unless he’s rushed right out and acquired some new expertise.Bet his new-found religious fervour is all about filthy lucre and his career. Sad.
I’m betting the next warming disaster will be a volcano
A major volcano would cause cooling due to temporarily blocking sunlight.
Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 16 at 11:57 AM • permalinkHurricanes can be deadly along the atlantic and gulf coasts of the U.S. Who knew? I suspect our native american forebears moved to more secure locations during hurricane season ,unlike the denizens of one gulf coast city that comes to mind.As a native of S. Carolina when the weather service starts talking about Cat.3 and above storms its time to pack up and move your ass outta there. Happy birthday Paco! Belated I know.
I think I once posted this comment. But since it came before one from Iowahawk (wronwright moves fingers in curly motion), it might have been missed by a few of you.
Three months before Katrina I took my son on a nice trip to New Orleans to visit some colleges (we visited others as well, not just those near Bourbon Street). We stayed at the Ponchartrain Hotel, a great art deco establishment. Unfortunately our stay was cut short by the approach of a tropical storm that most forecasters were warning would increase to a hurricane. We left on Saturday, but I noticed that on Friday and Saturday morning everyone was going about like nothing was happening. Finally my son asked a local African-American woman if she was worried about the hurricane. She said “naw, they always tell us to evacuate the city but we never pay attention to them”.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 06 16 at 12:09 PM • permalinkBush is to blame for....
Louisiana’s sinking coast
When the Army Corps of Engineers started systematically leveeing the river in the 19th century, it cut off the region’s main source of silt, the raw material of delta-building. The weight of large buildings and infrastructure and the leaching of water, oil and gas from beneath the surface across the region have also contributed to the problem. Following the great floods of 1927, the Mississippi River was surrounded by a series of levees meant to protect the city from such floods. In 1965, New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Betsy, which caused tremendous amount of flooding in the New Orleans area. The federal government began a levee-building program to protect New Orleans from a Category 3 hurricane (the same strength as Betsy). These series of levees were completed in recent years before Hurricane Katrina.However, an unintended consequence of the levees was that natural silt deposits from the Mississippi River were unable to replenish the delta, causing the coastal wetlands of Louisiana to wash away and the city of New Orleans to sink even deeper.[7] The Mississippi River delta is subsiding faster than any other place in the nation. And while the land is sinking, sea level has been rising. In the past 100 years, land subsidence and sea-level rise have added several feet to all storm surges. That extra height puts affected areas under deeper water; it also means flooding from weaker storms and from the outer edges of powerful storms spreads over wider areas. The marshes that ring New Orleans have sunk the quickest.
The problem with the wetlands was further worsened by salt water intrusion caused by the canals dug by the oil companies and private individuals in this marshland. This erosion of the wetlands not only caused Louisiana to lose 24 square miles per year of land annually and 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s, but it also destroyed Louisiana’s first line of defense against hurricanes.
Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power. Scientists working for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources measured some of these effects during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Andrew’s surge height dropped from 9.3 feet at Cocodrie to 3.3 feet at the Houma Navigation Canal 23 miles to the north. For every mile of the marsh-and-water landscape it traversed, it lost 3.1 inches of height, sparing some homes farther north from more flooding. Currently Louisiana has 30% of the total coastal marsh and accounts for 90% of the coastal marsh loss in the lower 48 states. The engineering of the river has basically brought the Gulf of Mexico right to the doorstep of New Orleans, making it more vulnerable to hurricanes.
The combination of sinking land and rising seas has place the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.
School buses left sitting in water, by an incompetent Mayor.
The State of Louisiana for failing to follow their OWN evacuation plan.
Tim Flannery believes hurricanes are caused by global warming
Hurricanes? How mundane. Obviously he didn’t get the latest piece of hysteria from the UN:
Climate change behind Darfur killing
THE slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says in an article published today.
...
When Darfur’s land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.
“For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out,” he said.
Obviously religious intolerance has nothing to do with it and it’s all about climate change and capitalism (ie, landowners fencing off their own land).
Words fail…
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 06 16 at 10:30 PM • permalinkI can’t find it right now, but there are reports about how well the Louisiana National Guard responded (as well as local individuals) to Katrina. They had a command center in the SuperDome that the MSM totally missed and were flying helicopter rescue missions within hours after Katrina passed over, as well as boat rescue. They literally prevented several thousand deaths.
Look it up.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 06 17 at 12:11 AM • permalinkJorgXMcKie
Try this article: Katrina: What the Media MissedCheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 06 17 at 02:58 PM • permalink
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Other things caused by global warming: Galveston Hurricane of 1900, San Francisco earth quake of 1906, and two championship losses by the Ohio State University in one year. Especially the latter.