September 02, 2005
New Orlean's after Katrina
I'm not the first to say this, but it's amazing that the images coming from New Orlean's are of a city in the richest country in the world. It looks like Bangladesh.
Forgetting for a minute that officials and the Army Corp of Engineers have been warning various levels of governments for years that the levees could fail, could aid have reached the people in New Orleans any faster than it has? FEMA was prepared to deal with the results of a hurricane but didn't count on a flood. It's not like there is a branch of the army just sitting around in one place waiting to deal with this sort of catastrophe. Plans have to be made and people have to be mobilized. Equipment has to be moved into place. That takes a certain amount of time. I'm sure there was action on some level from the beginning of the crisis but on a scale that wasn't obvious. While lessons can be learned from earlier storms or disasters, each crisis is different and has to be dealt with as it arises. No doubt bad decisions were made, but I'm sure mostly people who were there did all they could do as soon as they could.
Having said that, it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall as Bush and cronies were discussing their response. Did it matter to them that most of the affected people were poor? Did they hold off sending aid or support while trying to find a way to do it on the cheap? Was having so many troops in Iraq have an affect on the kind of response they could make or the speed they could make it? I'd like to think that the welfare of the victims was paramount in the minds of officials and bureaucrats, but who knows.
Posted by John at 04:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 31, 2005
Katrina aftermath
I was lying in bed last night listening to the rain hit my window and thinking about how connected the world is. That rain was the pale remnants of hurricane Katrina as it made its way northward over the continent. We got off so easily. I can't believe some of the pictures I'm seeing of what happened in New Orlean's. So many disaster movies show scenes of utter devastation near the end as the plucky heroes barely make it through some horrific event and vow to carry on. But, this time it's real. Very scary. And as global warming worsens we can no doubt expect more storms like this.
Posted by John at 01:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2005
Rare Earth Theory
It's interesting how when you start thinking about some topic you suddenly start stumbling over information about it. Of course, it's more likely that information related to it is going to catch your attention when otherwise it would just slide on by unnoticed. Case in point: I've been using the free processor time on my computers to crunch seti@home units for a few years, hoping, of course that evidence of ET would be discovered by the data crunched on my computer. It hasn't happened yet. In fact, lately I've decided that it's very unlikely to ever happen on anyones computer. I've been rereading The Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson and have been struck again at the great odds against intelligent life evolving to the point where someone could even conceive of radio, must less build a transmitter. So often on the path to our existence there were catastrophes such as meteorite strikes and epidemics that helped clear out other species and allow our forebears to continue to eke out an existence. And yesterday there was a story on Daily Planet regarding the Rare Earth hypothesis. This theory suggests that while bacteria may likely thrive on other planets, the chances of animal life evolving are very slim. Even on our planet they're suggesting that this portion of our earths history is limited and that we're running out of carbon dioxide and in a few billion years the plants will starve. Without plants all animals die. The planet goes back to being a home for just bacteria. The good news is (and this my personal conjecture), since the planet is a closed system bits of us will still live on long after we become grass food.
Posted by John at 11:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 27, 2005
worried about weather
This Story entitled "Global warming approaching critical point" has me quite worried. This is not the first warning we've had that we're reaching a critical point regarding weather change but this time they've suggested that the change could be irreparable in less than a decade. With the major offender being the US and Bush in for almost half a decade yet, there is no chance that they will be working on cutting back their emissions. China is becoming a bigger part of the problem as they feverishly try to 'modernize'.
I'm sure we're going to see more and more that the 'strange' weather we've been seeing in the last few years becomes the new normal. Bigger winter storms like we're seeing on the East Coast, heavier rains like we're seeing on the West Coast. Warmer than ever in Utah, snow in Texas.
I can imagine that once the weather patterns change and widespread famine and calamity spread, anarachy will follow close behind. How will farmers know when or what to plant when the weather can no longer be predicted? Society will begin to break down and groups of armed bandits will rule the streets at night. (Sounds a little like Iraq, doesn't it?)
Yesterday on Daily Planet they had a story which talked about how 14% of the garbage in landfills in North America is food that people had thrown away. I'll bet once produce becomes more scarce we'll learn to use more of what we have.
I read somewhere that the balance of the world's ecology began to shift the moment man learned agriculture and began to settle down. Since that time we've acted like we aren't part of the planet but lords of it. We've hacked and built and altered it to fit us rather than working with it. This is not a new idea but I thought it was an interesting thought that it's been a downward slide since way back then.
I don't know what's going to happen but I have no doubt that it will radically affect all of our lives. World War 3 may be more about humanity versus the weather rather than some countries against others.
Quotes from the CNN story:
Global warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned Monday.
According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius above the level in 1750 -- the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.Beyond a 2 degrees rise, "the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly" the report said, adding there would be a risk of "abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change."
It warned of "climatic tipping points" such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down.
Posted by John at 02:52 AM