The Day After Tomorrow -- really happening?

Politics International Politics
1

Remember that movie “The Day After Tomorrow” wherein the entire northern hemisphere freezes over in the space of about a week due to changing ocean temperatures (which ends with a Cheney lookalike finally admitting they’ve been wrong all along about environmental protection)?

Sorry I haven’t done any research on this and thus will come out sounding like a head-in-the-clouds libby alarmist; nevertheless, the correlation between recent weather patterns and warming oceans seems a trifle obvious.

Even if one is unwilling to concede that (or argues that ‘yes there is global climate change but it is a natural and not manmade occurence’), I’d like to think that Rush Limbaugh is eating at least one of his many baseless diatribes. Back in college, when I was on summer paint crew, our foreman use to force us to listen to him, and I remember him going off about “wetlands”:

“These days all the wacko environmentalists are moaning and wringing their hands about the destruction of the wetlands. Wetlands my ass! It’s a SWAMP!!!”

Then he went on about how swamps used to be bad things, but liberal propoganda has got our brains all turned around – he made the same argument for ‘rainforest =jungle’, by the way.

Now it turns out that the destruction of the local “swamps” around New Orleans contributed massively to the destruction there. So up yours, Rush – and all those rednecks who chuckle and nod agreeingly to all his baseless opinions on environmental issues.

2

Honestly, my opinion is that the chances of it happening overnight is the same as Central Park having any actual wolves. Scientifically however, they said the movie is fluff and would take a long time.

Watch Pen and Tellers episode about Endangered Animals and PETA.

Continuing: we should breed more pirates to offset global warming! arr!

3

No, actually it’s just the normal hurricane severity cycle.We had a lull for a few decades, now we’re back in the teeth of it.

As for swamps in Nawlins, well, hey, nobody would live down there if the place was still 90% covered by malarial swamps. You’re sounding a lot like the Californians who build in the fire-prone canyons or on the cliffs, or the Seattlites who built on Perkins Lane – “oh, we never would have guessed that a sheer cliff could crumble and dump our houses over the edge! It must be due to GLOBAL WARMING! The city never should have issued permits!”

4

That said, there has been research done - I’ll see if I can dig up a link - that posits a link between an increase in destructive power in hurricanes that may be connected to global warming. I can’t remember the details, but like I said, I’ll see if I can find it again.

5

Its so refreshing to see good science being used to suss this all out - NOT!

Sorry…vague memories about something Rush Limbaugh may or may not hae said many years ago is in no way relevant to the hurricane happening today.

Think warm Gulf of Mexico, think a very old (by USA Standards) city existing below sea-level, think flood levees bursting on Lake Ponchetrain, think cyclic appearances of hurricanes,

Now lets see some solid scientific data about swamps or wetlands being the cause of the death and destruction resulting from Hurricane Katrina…?

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Plus Rush Limbaugh has a tendency to talk out of his ass more often than not.

7

I have a better idea…

You guessed it-blame Bush!

[quote]New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security – coming at the same time as federal tax cuts – was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: “No one can say they didn’t see it coming…Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.”

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune:

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And still more:

[quote]Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country’s premier agency for dealing with such events – FEMA – is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.
…

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the “homeland security borg.”

This year it was announced that FEMA is to “officially” lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.[/quote]

More…(scroll down…

[quote]Feds’ Disaster Planning Shifts Away From Preparedness
…
Until recently, efforts to squeeze coastal protection money out of Washington have met with resistance. The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast, only to be opposed by the White House. Ultimately a deal was struck to steer $540 million to the state over four years. The total coast of repair work is estimated to be $14 billion.[/quote]

9

Solid science:

[quote]We’re talking about an incredible environmental disaster," van Heerden said.

He puts much of the blame for New Orleans’ dire situation on the very levee system that is designed to protect southern Louisiana from Mississippi River floods.

Before the levees were built, the river would top its banks during floods and wash through a maze of bayous and swamps, dropping fine-grained silt that nourished plants and kept the land just above sea level.

The levees “have literally starved our wetlands to death” by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico, van Heerden said.[/quote]

So who’s this wacko pinko tree-hugger?
Deputy-Director of the Loiusiana State University Hurricane Center- so what would he know?

Or just google ‘New Orleans wetlands hurricanes’ for pages and pages of statements by oceanographers, geologists, state officials, the Army Corps of Engineers, insurance companies…

But I’m sure that, in the best tradition of recent Republican science, the wingnuts will be able to dig up one guy funded by the Real Estate Board that claims the whole thing is dreamt up by left-wing America-hating environmental extremists, and that’ll be enough.

10

I thought we all agreed to blame this on the weather controlling satellites of the evil Russians?

I must have missed another memo.

I guess I’ll be expected to come in and work on reports this Saturday and Sunday also…now where is my stapler…

11

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]I thought we all agreed to blame this on the weather controlling satellites of the evil Russians?

I must have missed another memo.

I guess I’ll be expected to come in and work on reports this Saturday and Sunday also…now where is my stapler…[/quote]

Haha, what is the concept behind weather controlling satellites anyway?

I remember after the 2004 Taiwan elections, that some Pan Blues blamed CSB for all the rain during their protests, claiming that he was sending planes to condesnsate the clouds. Nutjobs!

There was a special on this on one of the three TLC that basically said something like “The Day After Tomorrow” at best could happen in 200 years but not overnight like it did in the movies.

12

That said, there has been research done - I’ll see if I can dig up a link - that posits a link between an increase in destructive power in hurricanes that may be connected to global warming. I can’t remember the details, but like I said, I’ll see if I can find it again.[/quote]

[quote]Climate change could make future hurricanes stronger, but whether the effect is measurable is still a matter of debate. It is also unknown whether it will change the total number of storms.

Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims that warmer oceans and increased moisture could intensify showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes.

“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html
[/quote]

I could swear they were talking about this very thing on NPR a day or 2 ago but maybe it was just regular news stations.

Bodo

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Its so refreshing to see good science being used to suss this all out - NOT!

Sorry…vague memories about something Rush Limbaugh may or may not hae said many years ago is in no way relevant to the hurricane happening today.

Think warm Gulf of Mexico, think a very old (by USA Standards) city existing below sea-level, think flood levees bursting on Lake Ponchetrain, think cyclic appearances of hurricanes,

Now lets see some solid scientific data about swamps or wetlands being the cause of the death and destruction resulting from Hurricane Katrina…?[/quote]

TC - I think you have many valid points, and I agree. But here’s some info regarding the environment that I found informative:

[quote]The very technology that protects New Orleans from flooding has backfired, environmental experts say.

They say the levees that ring the city have led to the rapid decay of nearby wetlands during the past century, removing a crucial buffer zone that once protected the area from hurricanes. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9118570/
[/quote]

[quote]Vulnerable city
Experts have warned about New Orleans

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Brace for more Katrinas, say experts
Tue Aug 30,10:55 AM ET

[i] PARIS (AFP) - For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of big Atlantic storms.

2005 is on track to be the worst-ever year for hurricanes, according to experts measuring ocean temperatures and trade winds – the two big factors that breed these storms in the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic.

Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Risk, a London-based consortium of experts, predicted that the region would see 22 tropical storms during the six-month June-November season, the most ever recorded and more than twice the average annual tally since records began in 1851.

Seven of these storms would strike the United States, of which three would be hurricanes, it said.

Already, 2004 and 2003 were exceptional years: they marked the highest two-year totals ever recorded for overall hurricane activity in the North Atlantic.

This increase has also coincided with a big rise in Earth’s surface temperature in recent years, driven by greenhouse gases that cause the Sun’s heat to be stored in the sea, land and air rather than radiate back out to space.[/i]

Read the rest of the article:
news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050830/sc … herscience

15

Yes everyone, its time to buy Home Depot stocks.

Plus gas prices in America has surpassed $3!!!

16

Last time I filled up my car, I paid 2.85$ a gallon. As of last night, gas was up to 3.55 US$. However, I saw on the news this morning that it’s down to $3.15 due to the opening of US oil reserves.

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[quote=“ShrimpCrackers”]Yes everyone, its time to buy Home Depot stocks.

Plus gas prices in America has surpassed $3!!![/quote]

Have heard from the office staff - down in Georgia they’re selling gas for $5/gallon - myth? - price gouging?

Bodo

18

In this apocalyptic scenario, trade your gas sucker for a diesel. Uh, NOW!

We’re stockpiling hundreds of gallons of diesel to mix with recycled vegetable oil, which of course, NEVER runs out due to Americans’ fried food comsumption. Most of the petrol stations around here are bone dry of gasoline. And we’re in NC mountains, about 400 to 500 miles from Gulf States! I haven’t seen anything like this since the 70’s.

George Bush, your empire is crumbling, you fuck. This is the end, folks! Sustainability is the key. Thank god we have survival skills, firewood, real food, and horses.

19

Bush’s beloved bankruptcy bill (written by his rich friends in the credit card industry) is already coming back to haunt the nation…

New bankruptcy law a problem for Katrina victims Thu Sep 1, 2005 6:42 PM ET

By Jonathan Stempel

[i]NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Katrina is expected to cause a spurt of bankruptcy filings by storm victims – and sweeping changes in U.S.
bankruptcy laws may leave them even more strapped than they otherwise might be.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which takes effect October 17, includes a slew of rules and restrictions intended to curb abuse. These are expected to make it harder for individuals to file to keep creditors away, and more difficult for businesses to reorganize.

But the law wasn’t directed at people who file because of catastrophes such as Katrina, in which people lost homes, businesses and perhaps months of regular paychecks. Katrina has caused widespread devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi and left New Orleans, population 462,269, virtually uninhabitable.

“People who are seriously affected by this hurricane are not going to be able to file bankruptcy by October 17,” said Henry Sommer, co-editor of “Collier on Bankruptcy,” a leading reference work. “They have more pressing things in their lives, like survival.”[/i]

Read the rest of the article.

20

What’d you do, Alien? Run off an join one of those militia groups out on the fringe?