I heard no promise of Category 5 hurricane protections for New Orleans. Indeed, you can search the whole speech. It's vague on just how strong the rebuilt levees will ultimately be. The most explicit promise is this: "We're working to make the levees stronger than ever by 2010, and we will study what we need to do to give New Orleans even greater protection."
We'll study it. Wow, that sure inspires confidence.
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I wanted to put this comment on one of your statements about your book. But you write so many comments that, by the time I went to the bookstore and got back, I couldn't even find one of them. So I'll put it here:
I have contributed to turning Chris into a Republican - bought his book. Now I am going to fisk it.
I don't know what that means but the SciBloggers say that all the time, so I thought I'd say it.
By the way, another phrase you guys use all the time: sock puppets. I see the picture of you on this blog and of that Ed guy on another blog. I don't believe that either of you really are that young. I was sure that you would look like, say, Daniel Schorr (?), or at least Tim Russert. So I believe that those pictures are sock puppets. Is that "fisking"?
Boy, I love all this scientific jargon.
Having met Chris at one of his book talks in Philadelphia (I hope you are coming back here again this time too, Chris) I can guarantee that he does actually look that young.
Not only is that not fisking, but those pictures aren't sockpuppets nor could they be.
This is the second time I have read a post by you on this issue, namely that we should try to protect New Orleans from a Cat 5. It is a particularly interesting issue, because it really is a pure policy issue and really has little or nothing to do with how the science is interpretted.
Why is it so important to protect New Orleans from a Cat 5? Is the economic and cultural (I am not discounting the latter) value of the town so important that it merits such a tremendous expense? Especially since, it is likely that at those extremes, the costs could be exponential in the strength of the hurricane. Heck, for the 250 billion the LA governor is asking for, we could nicely relocate the entire city for that cost.
At some point, you just have to look at the expense and say "this is not worth it". Your rhetoric makes it sound like there is no such line for New Orleans, that we should protect it whatever the cost. But why? This is not the first time that environmental reasons have forced people to get up and move.
well, look at it: BushCo may have luck out this year, with the 'cane season starting out softer than the past couple. he's only gotta make vague promises one more year and then He Doesn't Care It's Not His Problem. like Iraq.
still, we got a long month of September ahead of us, and although Sea Surface Temperatures ("SSTs") aren't up there in the Atlantic where they were, that Caribbean and the Gulf sure has hot spots.
and it needn't be New Orleans. i mean, a scenario where another big metro gets smashed big time is as bad as the Big Easy gettin' it again.
I want a piece of that discussion.
But first let me apologize to the "Rev". I guess I don't do parody very well. I did understand the meaning of "fisk" and "sock puppet" - from their usage, but I've never seen them defined before. Thank you for the links. And I did just want to include them in a comment, however wrong and meaningless they were there.
Back to ekzept's point. I agree. Since all (most) of us writing and commenting on these blogs agree that global warming is real, that sea levels will rise as a consequence, and that hurricanes will become more numerous (and maybe more powerful) it seems like pissing into the wind to be rebuilding a city that is already below sea level. In 10 (or 50 or 100) years the storm surge will be 10 (or 20 or 50) feet higher than it was for Katrina.
I think I understand the importance of the cultural heritage of the city and that it is probably impossible to re-create it somewhere else, but is that more important than the lives of the people who will have to go through the same thing, or worse, the next time?
Feel quite free to fisk this unmercifully.
Is that "fisking"?
Actually, the origin of the term "fisk" comes from the right-leaning blogosphere, and I haven't heard the SciBloggers use it that much, if at all (at least the ones that I've read): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking
And here's a recent Chris interview: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4697289892356408506&q=chris+mo…
Folks, in case you didn't hear from the president's speech today, nobody is retreating from New Orleans. They are rebuilding and coming back (supposedly). Given this, yeah, I think the city has to be well defended so the same disaster doesn't happen again, or even worse this time.
But my point is why does "well-defended" have to include a Cat 5? We live with acceptable risk all the time. There isn't a 100% chance that we won't die in an airplane flight, or even worse driving on the highway. But that doesn't stop us. We embrace acceptable risk every day.
It is going to be very expensive to protect such an area from a Cat 5, if it is even possible at all. It might even be less expensive to rebuild New Orleans again.
The best we can do is do a cost benefit analysis, shore the place up to some reasonable degree (which may again be the Cat 3 level), and then just say there are no guarantees otherwise (just like there are no guarantees for the plane crash).
>i>At some point, you just have to look at the expense and say "this is not worth it".
Check out Newsweek this week. They have a nice little article that describes several Dutch companies (who know all about living below sea level) trying to provide our government with designs that would protect New Orleans from a Category 5, at the same cost that has already been budgeted for reconstruction, and getting nowhere fast.