:: Mother Nature isn't playing nice anymore ::

Do you ever wonder if nature, the earth, the solar system, infinity, has a built-in defense system?  I know I do.  So why not nature?  I mean, we do have the WingNuts Right’s Intelligent Design now, so why not Intelligent Natural Systems?   Maybe, the part of nature that has yet to be destroyed by us, the grand Intelligent Design, wakes up and says:  "I’m tired of this shit, and I’m not going to take it anymore!"  Nature protects it creatures and its ecosystems by wiping out the element which is causing it the most problems, i.e. bipeds, that superiority complex on two legs.  Kind of like a major remodel.  Of the Earth.  And, its inhabitants.  Happened before, it can happen again.  Lets just keep bitch-slapping nature and see how much she can really take.  Let’s watch that natural temper rise to even greater heights of destruction.

:: So…. Bush junk science to the rescue:  There is no global warming. 

    All the world’s leading scientists collaborated across the world and lied about that, as what?, an economic scare tactic?  The polar ice cap isn’t melting and strange new critters aren’t metamorphosing in ponds so acidic, polluted and toxic they would kill a conservative muckraker human being just from the fumes alone and completely eat their flesh and bones in a matter of hours, if not minutes.  Hmmmm.  And, of course, human activity is certainly not to blame for excessive use of toxic chemicals, oil, gas, lignite, land for more and more and more development to meet the demands of an ever greedy and consumer-oriented public.  The loss of vegetative and animal habitats aren’t a problem, and particularly the extinction of animal or vegetative species is always someone else’s problem, and in the end why should I care.  So, what if that particular specie of lizard eats a particular mosquito that causes malaria and death in children.  So, what if the bird chicken that eats the worm that eat the microscopic bug that ate the radioactive waste dumped in the landfill that leaks upstream to your downstream water system.  So, what if mercury and chemicals can harm an infant and change your DNA into something nobody would recognize as human; now, that’s intelligent design.  I mean, I won’t be here in 30 or 40 years so why should I care?  I’ll just leave all my bad habits and teachings behind for everyone else to fuck up the world with even more, including my complete lack of respect for anything that doesn’t walk upright on two legs (and, even that respect in particular is waning with the moon.)  Frankly, why should I care about anything but me, me, me?

    In fact, why should I give a damn about the devastation of say, two tsunami that wiped out well over 40,000 lives, or say, a hurricane named Katrina (how cute), that caused devastation across the South from Florida to Louisiana.  Why on earth would I care that Exxon or Shell or Valero or any other oil rig in the Gulf that is causing devastation to the ocean in the form of toxic spills due to Katrina?  Why should I care that the US government is sanctioning certain industries to pollute and devastate the environment of other countries?  I mean, about the only thing people seem to give a damn about is the cost of the oil company gougers and speculators that put oil at $71 bucks a barrel today in order to line their BODs pockets with more mullah.  Now, we can’t drive afford to drive our Bush-empowered Land Rovers, Hummers, and Suburbans, etc. that cost more than some people mortgage payments and sometimes more than their annual income and Bush just let us off the hook for requiring better gas mileage for these gas-guzzlers, too!

    Tell me, why should I care.  Why should I care when the gift our forefathers bears left us in the US of A was due to the genocide of the Native Americans whose way of life is the one we should have observed in the first place.  Why should I care when it took the back breaking effort of Asian and Irish immigrants to build the mass transportation network across this country that we virtually abandoned for the individualism of the automobile?  Industrialization was brilliant, eh?  Why should I care that most of the progress made in this country was made due to the death and destruction of the best parts of this land - a land mutually held in common by all of us, a gift we should take great care of forever.  Why should I care that war is the weapon and strategy of choice in order to steal, kill and lie to get what isn’t rightfully ours?  Why?  I really want to understand.  I’m not sure I ever will.

But maybe some of these short-takes will help me remember why all this is really important. 

::   A Perfect Storm:

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City. Yesterday, disaster struck. One of the strongest storms in recorded history rocked the Gulf Coast, bringing 145 mph winds and floods of up to 20 feet. One million residents were evacuated; at least 65 are confirmed dead. Tens of thousands of homes were completely submerged. Mississippi’s governor reported "catastrophic damage on all levels." Downtown New Orleans buildings were "imploding," a fire chief said. Oil surged past $70 a barrel. New Orleanians were grimly asking each other, "So, where did you used to live?" (To donate to Red Cross disaster relief, click here or call 1-800-HELP-NOW). While it happened, President Bush decided to … continue his vacation, stopping by the Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk his Medicare drug benefit plan. On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the local level who have taken this storm seriously.” He’s not one of them.

Progress Report:

"How Not to Prepare for a Massive Hurricane," by President Bush, congressional conservatives, and their corporate special interest allies.

 :: Storm Preparedness:

Two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels. Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. … Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now." (Too bad Louisiana isn’t a swing state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances — and the run-up to the 2004 election — the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn’t even experience hurricane damage.)

::   Natural Storm Buffers:

The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea. When he came into office, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net loss" wetland policy his father initiated. He didn’t keep his word. Bush rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration, ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide." Last year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands." The result? New Orleans may be in even greater danger: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next few decades, then you won’t need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans — a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city too." 

 ::  Global Warming Fueled by Policy and the Human Touch:

Severe weather occurrences like hurricanes and heat waves already take hundreds of lives and cause millions in damages each year. As the Progress Report has noted, data increasingly suggest that human-induced global warming is making these phenomena more dangerous and extreme than ever. "The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service," science author Ross Gelbspan writes. "Its real name is global warming." AP reported recently on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific … have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period." Yet just last week, as Katrina was gathering steam and looming over the Gulf, the Bush administration released new CAFE standards that actually encourage automakers to produce bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles, while preventing states from taking strong, progressive action to reverse global warming.

 ::  Stripping Resources in National Parks and Refuges while Devastating Ecosystems:

Last April, congressional leaders used a back door tactic to allow drilling in the arctic as part of the federal budget resolution. But the fight to protect the refuge isn’t over. Drilling proponents must include a provision to open the refuge to drilling as part of the budget reconciliation process. Supporters claim that opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling will secure $2.4 billion in royalties and other payments. But even if drilling were allowed, it would represent less than a year’s supply of our nation’s oil and would take 10 years to make it to market – hardly an impact that is relevant to this year’s federal budget. Two dozen House Republicans signed an Aug. 4 letter to House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo outlining their opposition to using the budget reconciliation process to open ANWR, giving hope that the drilling plan will receive more thoughtful consideration. Allen Smith writes in the Boston Globe, "Congress should refuse to authorize Arctic Refuge development. The $2.4 billion fails to meet any standard for inclusion in the FY 2006 Budget, which the Congressional Research Service reports will further increase our national deficits if passed into law." 

::  From an MIT Global Warming expert:

Katrina is just the latest in a rash of powerful hurricanes that have been pummeling the Atlantic in recent years, including a record-breaking 33 between 1995 and 1999. It’s made many wonder if global warming is bringing the wrath of the planet down upon all our heads. Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied historical records of hurricanes around the globe, said the answer is yes and no.

In a recent paper, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years," published in the science journal Nature, Emanuel found that as sea temperatures rise, the duration and intensity of hurricanes are going up, too. 

The reason for the correlation is pretty straightforward: "Hurricanes derive their energy from the evaporation of sea water," Emanuel explained in a phone interview. "When you evaporate water from the ocean you actually transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. A similar effect happens when you come out of the shower in the morning. You feel cold because water is evaporating from your skin, and taking heat from your body. That heat energy doesn’t disappear." Instead, it fuels the intensity of hurricanes.  So, as global warming increases, expect hurricanes to get stronger.

Ultimately, Emanuel said, it’s not a vengeful Mother Nature but man’s politics that are to blame for the destruction. As long as people insist on erecting homes and businesses, aided by low insurance rates and business lobbyists, in vulnerable areas like the Gulf Coast, there’s little scientists can do to prevent the havoc. "I like to say that there is no such thing as a 100 percent natural disaster," Emanuel said. "We have to put stuff in harm’s way for there to be a disaster, and we’re very good at doing that, and subsidizing people who continue to do it."

::  We’ve reversed mother nature by creating land and holding back water via ‘engineering’ as mother nature takes back what she previously had as New Orleans Levee’s collapsed today.  How the levees and human deficiencies proved out today:

Among the five hundred miles of levee deficiencies now calling for attention along the Mississippi River, the most serious happen to be in New Orleans. Among other factors, the freeboard — the amount of levee that reaches above flood levels — has to be higher in New Orleans to combat the waves of ships. Elsewhere, the deficiencies are averaging between one and two feet with respect to the computed high-water flow line, which goes on rising as runoffs continue to speed up and waters are increasingly confined. Not only is the water higher. The levees tend to sink as well. They press down on the mucks beneath them and squirt materials out to the sides. Their crowns have to be built up. "You put five feet on and three feet sink," a Corps engineer remarked to me one day. This is especially true of the levees that frame the Atchafalaya swamp, so the Corps has given up trying to fight the subsidence there with earth movers alone, and has built concrete floodwalls along the tops of the levees, causing the largest river swamp in North America to appear to be the world’s largest prison. It keeps in not only water, of course, but silt. Gradually, the swamp elevations are building up. The people of Acadiana say that the swamp would be the safest place in which to seek refuge in a major flood, because the swamp is higher than the land outside the levees. 

 ::  With storm surges of up to 20 feet in some areas, huge petro-chemical plants, gas stations and waste pits have unleashed a toxic cocktail of chemicals ranging from vinyl chloride to gasoline in Katrina’s wake.

Already nicknamed "Cancer Alley," the polluted area now suffers from contaminated flood waters of up to 20 feet - which can affect homes, drinking water and surrounding waterways. In New Orleans, the city’s levee system is now serving only to hold water in the city, creating a temporary lake of toxic chemicals, gas, oil and storm debris.

Deputy director of the Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center, Ivor van Heerden, warns, "We’re talking about an incredible environmental disaster… a bowl full of highly contaminated water with contaminated air flowing around and, literally, very few places for anybody to go where they’ll be safe."

 ::  Hurricanes and Global Warming:

For a glimpse at how bad it could have been, read Mooney’s prescient AP piece from three months ago. And for a lament about the woeful lack of preparation, read his followup: "prescience sucks."  Take the following debate over hurricanes and global warming — both argued repeatedly by Roger Pielke Jr. (see here and here).

 ::  Experts fear gas crisis (More like speculators hope for a gas crisis & I am wondering about all that IRAQ oil Halliburton shipped over for US federal reserves in late 2003 - what ever happened to that?)  By the way, all you Texas gas-guzzlers, gas prices went up to $2.59/gallon today in SA:

The impact of Hurricane Katrina on U.S. oil production and refinery capabilities may be worse than initial reports estimated and could lead to a national gas crisis in the short-term, analysts warned Tuesday.

"Without the hurricane we had perceived a bounce in U.S. oil inventory,’ Englund said. "But if refineries are out of commission because of damage or flooding for an unspecified period of time, it will shock the entire system and I expect firms will hold back their production."

This could send oil, gasoline and heating oil prices soaring higher than their current record levels.

Industry watchers said the uncertainty surrounding the scope of the damage to Louisiana’s oil offshore oil rigs, refineries, and its ports which account for half of all oil imported into the country, was pushing commodity prices higher.

Crude oil struck a new record, near $71 a barrel Tuesday, while the average national price for unleaded gasoline hovered at about $2.60 a gallon, up 39 percent from a year earlier.

Said Englund, "Going into the hurricane we had a shortage of refining capacity anyway. This just throws a hand grenade into the already delicate balance."

Consumers have been absorbing the sticker shock at the pump for months already without greatly altering their spending habits. However, analysts cautioned that if gas prices reach $3 a gallon, it could force consumers to make noticeable changes to their budgets.

 ::  Then, there is cost of Katrina, monetarily and due to property damage.  And, of course we, the taxpayer, will subsidize these people in rebuilding in the same damned place over and over and over again.  Even if you are below sea level. 

Katrina Could Cost Insurers $25 Billion   As Hurricane Katrina ground its way north from the Gulf Coast late yesterday, estimates of insured losses ranged from $10 billion to $25 billion, which would amount to the largest loss from a single event since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Update on 08.30.2005 by Sine.Qua.Non

:: A most excellent post on the DailyKOS via RedDan’s Diary:

Trevino&co: lickspittle sycophants defend Bush against the reality of the Katrina Disaster