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229 comments on DrumBeat: December 1, 2006

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SaturnV on December 2, 2006 - 9:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I suggest doing a little more research before coming to that conclusion.

There was a lot of typhoon and cyclonic action in the world this year.  Australia alone had two back to back CAT 5, stormsone of which knocked out almost all of the country's banana crop.  I might add that strong cyclones hitting Australia had almost faded from memory as the last which caused any major damage occured back in 1974 with cyclone Tracy.
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Hothgor on December 2, 2006 - 11:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
And when was the last time a major hurricane hit New Orleans?
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SaturnV on December 2, 2006 - 5:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
And when was the last time a major hurricane hit New Orleans?

Err, last year.
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Hothgor on December 2, 2006 - 8:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm talking about a major hurricane before Katrina.  I find the GW to super hurricane link to be tenuous at best.  It took 30+ years of increasing temperatures for one to manifest in the US/NO and cause the destruction everyone was talking about.
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SaturnV on December 3, 2006 - 12:09am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm talking about a major hurricane before Katrina.  I find the GW to super hurricane link to be tenuous at best.  It took 30+ years of increasing temperatures for one to manifest in the US/NO and cause the destruction everyone was talking about.

Buddy it only takes one event laid on by nature that exceeds the specified design criteria of whatever technofix you've got in place, and you're screwed.  Case in point - New Orleans.
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Hothgor on December 3, 2006 - 12:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Like wise, it only takes one event laid on by nature that exceeds the specified design criteria of whatever permaculturefix you've got in place, and you're screwed.  Guess we should all just roll over and die then, right?
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SaturnV on December 3, 2006 - 3:25am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Like wise, it only takes one event laid on by nature that exceeds the specified design criteria of whatever permaculturefix you've got in place, and you're screwed.  Guess we should all just roll over and die then, right?

Yep, only the scale of the disaster is different.  Buddy people have been producing (including reproducing) and consuming without limits while drawing down finite resources for several centuries now - stuffing up the natural world in the process, it doesn't matter what technofixes you try to institute to alleviate the symptoms of all that producing and consuming going on, eventually there will be a collapse and die-off when the resources that enabled our overshoot (like fossil fuels) are exhausted.  All technofixes do in the context of perpetual growth in a finite world is ensure that the collapse and die-off will be even more resounding when it comes, as there will be more people, infrastructure, and GDP being supported at the final ecological reckoning.  Doesn't matter what you and I want or think as these trends of exponential growth and consumption are continuing unabated, and will continue to do so as virtually all people in the world are clamouring for more development (production and consumption) not less.  Worldwide population control is politically impossible, and no one will willingly agree to reduce their living standards in order to conserve finite resources and the biosphere for the benefit of future generations and the other species.  
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AlanfromBigEasy on December 3, 2006 - 1:29am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The "specified design criteria" þ were NOT exceeded during Katrina.  The US Army# finally admitted that they knew that their design was faulty and would fail prematurely in 1985, biut kepy quite about the design fault.

Some retired colonel ot general should be found in retirement, court martialed and shot for killing over 1,000 Americans through criminal neglect.

þ The debris line was 12 to 13 inches below the top when the 17th Street Canal when it just collapsed.  I have talked to eye witnesses and seen photos.

# In 1928, after the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, the US Army was given responsibility for flood control for several US cities critical to the nation's well being.  New Orleans and St. Louis among the few cities specified (from meory)

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SaturnV on December 3, 2006 - 5:45am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The "specified design criteria" þ were NOT exceeded during Katrina.

Alan, whether by accident or design the levy walls were breached, and that is the point.  If it wasn't meant to be there in the first place, was poorly designed, or is merely addressing the effects of overproduction and over-consumption rather than the overproduction and over-consumption itself, you're just delaying the inevitable.  Nature will always produce an event which is greater than the specified design criteria - for there are no technofixes for the problems generated by perpetual growth in a finite world.  You just allow more people to exist, more infrastructure and GDP to be supported before the inevitable day of reckoning, and this was the lesson of Katrina.
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AlanfromBigEasy on December 3, 2006 - 9:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
No, the lesson of Katrina was that the US Army was criminally negligent.  Had we had honest engineers, say, Dutch, we would have had a couple of weeks without power, lots of roof damage, a half dozen dead from accidents, etc.

You are seeing some great moral anout civilization that is JUST NOT THERE !  It is very similar to a dam failure whe nthe water rises to within a foot of the top of the dam.  The moral is NOT "Oh my God, we should not build dams !" but "What idiot built that dam !"

Amsterdam & Rotterdam are protected behind multiple layers of defense against 10,000 year storms and are mulling how to improve that rating with sea level rise.

Fortunately, New Orleans already knows the answer to that.  Use the sediment from the spring floods to build up the delta, reversing a century of US Army Corps of Engineers.

Best Hopes,

Alan

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SaturnV on December 3, 2006 - 8:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The moral is NOT "Oh my God, we should not build dams !" but "What idiot built that dam !"

Another side effect of placing too much faith in technology is that sometimes it just fails.  After all it is designed by humans.  Mistakes can occur in the design, materials, construction or the simple operation of the system involved. Alan I agree with your sentiments. There is no moral to the story behind Katrina - only lessons.  And a lesson is presented until it is learnt it's said.  I feel there will be many lessons to be learnt through the pain of the collapse that's to come.
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AlanfromBigEasy on December 4, 2006 - 12:28am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The lesson is not a "mistake", but a fundamental lack of INTEGRITY by a SYSTEM.  In this case, it was engineers in the uniform of the US Army who lacked a fundamental level of integrity !

Alan

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