(no subject)
Aug. 31st, 2005 07:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzToday I'm going to give money to the red cross. They're not my favorite charity by a long shot, but they are out there trying to make do with the hurricane situation down south. Originally I was more in the spirit of blaming those caught in the mess as everyone I know saw the reports and chose to leave the area, but now they are finding it is worse than anyone expected - evacuating the shelters they originally asked people to report to (like the superdome).
Edit - heck, even the president cut into one of his vacations because of the situation. Wow, it must really be bad.
It's probably not the time, but it's hard not to view the events in light of some political issues.
1) It might be a bad idea to build on the waterfront in the first place. Much of the area damaged has been damaged before and if rebuilt will be damaged again. By all means people have the freedom to choose those actions, but they shouldn't be supported by federal tax dollars. Since I ran into the view that we shouldn't pay to insure those who build in beachfront, flood plane, or storm prone areas - I came up with what I thought was a reasonable proposition: insure these homes and businesses today, continue their policies today, but today only. The next time they are destroyed > 50% or so, give them the option to take the money and run. Let them collect based on their expectations, but then inform them they will never be insured in those areas again. Once you collect, you can either move to a place that won't be decimated every 10 years, or self-insure and face the chance of being blown out to sea with no financial assistance.
New Orleans though...this raises a more complicated issue. This is a city hundreds of years old - has it sunk below sea level, or is it safe for hundreds of years only to face a rare disaster? It may be economically benficial to keep the city going even with an occasional flood. That's exactly the sort of policy that is best run by the Fed.
2) Global warming: the US is a major if not the worst contributor to global warming, an issue which is predicted to lead to rising water levels, wild temperature fluctuations up and down, and more frequent and severe storms. The record disasters we are facing may well be the result of our own poor environmental policies. By most if not all models, what has happened so far might just be the tip of the melting iceberg?
3) Looters. It's pretty hard to justify the opportunism that is going on, but personally I understand. I've always had the urge to steal, and I certainly have done so in the past. I still feel the urge today, though my earned comfort and learned morality keeps those urges at bay. It's hard not to be repulsed at the video and reports of looting in the midst of this disaster, but it's also hard not to understand. Poverty hurts, even the US version of poverty. The video I've seen has been of stores being robbed, and while it's wrong to do so, I find that it's far easier to think of a store as having no victim than of someone's home. When you're a have-not, it's far easier to think of those people with homes as racist, cruel, and born into the wealth they occupy while you have nothing. My horrible question is this: how much overlap is there between the people who stayed that now require rescue and the looters? I hope the looting is just sensational on video and not as widespread as some indicate.
This...this is the problem with or the benefit of age. Nothing is just black and white - there are two or more sides to every issue, with valid points on both sides. No solution is perfect - all have costs and it's not easy to predict the results. Sometimes I envy the average FOX watching american for their naive belief that the issues are simple, that X is good while Y is bad and that the answer is Z. All I ever seem to see are shades of gray.
EDIT - looting point noted by others:
look at this sneaky racism on yahoo news:
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
versus
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530
white people FIND things. black people LOOT stores.
Edit - heck, even the president cut into one of his vacations because of the situation. Wow, it must really be bad.
It's probably not the time, but it's hard not to view the events in light of some political issues.
1) It might be a bad idea to build on the waterfront in the first place. Much of the area damaged has been damaged before and if rebuilt will be damaged again. By all means people have the freedom to choose those actions, but they shouldn't be supported by federal tax dollars. Since I ran into the view that we shouldn't pay to insure those who build in beachfront, flood plane, or storm prone areas - I came up with what I thought was a reasonable proposition: insure these homes and businesses today, continue their policies today, but today only. The next time they are destroyed > 50% or so, give them the option to take the money and run. Let them collect based on their expectations, but then inform them they will never be insured in those areas again. Once you collect, you can either move to a place that won't be decimated every 10 years, or self-insure and face the chance of being blown out to sea with no financial assistance.
New Orleans though...this raises a more complicated issue. This is a city hundreds of years old - has it sunk below sea level, or is it safe for hundreds of years only to face a rare disaster? It may be economically benficial to keep the city going even with an occasional flood. That's exactly the sort of policy that is best run by the Fed.
2) Global warming: the US is a major if not the worst contributor to global warming, an issue which is predicted to lead to rising water levels, wild temperature fluctuations up and down, and more frequent and severe storms. The record disasters we are facing may well be the result of our own poor environmental policies. By most if not all models, what has happened so far might just be the tip of the melting iceberg?
3) Looters. It's pretty hard to justify the opportunism that is going on, but personally I understand. I've always had the urge to steal, and I certainly have done so in the past. I still feel the urge today, though my earned comfort and learned morality keeps those urges at bay. It's hard not to be repulsed at the video and reports of looting in the midst of this disaster, but it's also hard not to understand. Poverty hurts, even the US version of poverty. The video I've seen has been of stores being robbed, and while it's wrong to do so, I find that it's far easier to think of a store as having no victim than of someone's home. When you're a have-not, it's far easier to think of those people with homes as racist, cruel, and born into the wealth they occupy while you have nothing. My horrible question is this: how much overlap is there between the people who stayed that now require rescue and the looters? I hope the looting is just sensational on video and not as widespread as some indicate.
This...this is the problem with or the benefit of age. Nothing is just black and white - there are two or more sides to every issue, with valid points on both sides. No solution is perfect - all have costs and it's not easy to predict the results. Sometimes I envy the average FOX watching american for their naive belief that the issues are simple, that X is good while Y is bad and that the answer is Z. All I ever seem to see are shades of gray.
EDIT - looting point noted by others:
look at this sneaky racism on yahoo news:
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
versus
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530
white people FIND things. black people LOOT stores.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 12:09 pm (UTC)Idiots who think it will be "fun" to ride out a hurricane I have no sympathy for...but there's a lot of desperate poverty in that area. How do you get out when you have no car, no cash, and nowhere to go?
I'm thinking of giving to the regional Habitat for Humanity. Nothing against the Red Cross (I might give them a call to volunteer locally) but I'm guessing they'll be inundated with donations for the time being.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 01:30 pm (UTC)Rare events elicit far more sympathy, but for instance...a hurricane in FL. They get hit every year multiple times. A flood in a flood plain, where they know it will flood on average every ten years.
My mom has seen video of cops looting too - now that's a hoot!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 11:21 pm (UTC)I mean, the only real natural disasters we get around here are tornadoes and the occasional flooding in Old Town. On the other hand, we are a big gigantic target for anybody with a grudge against the US.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 01:48 pm (UTC)You are my friend - but - you've been making some fairly stupid statements regarding New Orleans from man facets. First (and this goes for Lori as well) it isn't just the wetlands. The issue is actually that the levee-system keeps silt from reaching the delta at the end of the river correctly, so the land level is being eroded by natural wave action. The city has been and continues to sink below sea level. New Orleans was probably not below sea level when the Spanish began building 300 years ago - at least no more so than the District of Columbia was when it was built on a swamp.
All that said -- while most of us have seen lots of the French Quarter and the Garden District when we've visited, the odds are good that we don't get down into the Magazine much or the outlying areas where income and poverty are serious issues. Over 100,000 members of the NOLA community do not own vehicles and are existing at or below the poverty line...so bus and train is not an option. I'm not talking about looting - I am talking about the pure ability to "head for the hills" in any manner. By the way - LA. - not known for its hills.
Last - there were no plans for evacuation. The "plan" is fairly similar to all of you in DC being told on, what, Saturday afternoon, that you had to get out of DC for an unknown period.
1) go where? the storm will land and move - go to Texas? Arkansaw? Mississippi? Florida? Alabama?
2) IF all of your (provided you have any extended family are also in evacuation or alert zones, what are your choices?
3) Everything you own, everything you cherish and have worked hard for is trapped someplace that *may* end up safe after all - but looted -- and you have no credit cards or savings (see poverty line again) -- what would you do?
4) Looting...I am near my home, at least I can sleep on the upper floors even if the downstairs is flooded and the power and water (and sewers!) are dead. My food is gone - I had provisions but they were washed out of the house, aren't enough for the people who found my refuge, or won't be enough now that I am told it may be more than a month untl life resumes its proper course.
-- a good artlicle was written elsewhere in LJ land - but to sum it up:
"based on news captions, if you are of darker skin color, you are looting, if you are of lighter shade, you have 'found food' - in pictures of people leaving the same flooded drugstore."
My $.02 -- during one of the major snow storms in the 1980s - people broke into the Giant on Rolling Road and Keene Mill - for, apparently, juice, batteries, and other sundries. It was 1982...we did not lose power and were only snowed in for 3 days. Again, in 1994, when many were snowed in for 2 days, there were stores burgled in Fairfax. We are nto trained as a society to plan, save, prepare. Running out of toilet paper is an emergency for some; insulin for others.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 01:57 pm (UTC)The scenario you paint with the poor makes sense, though I skeptical that the looting of TVs and the like counts as survival. Food I can see, and grabbing large amounts out of panic I can see.
They did fill the superdome with people, yet others stayed in their homes. I was ok with hitting the shelters, but staying at home or the reports of people still in bars didn't make it seem like people lacked options. Shelters might suck, but they seemed like an option for hte poor.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 02:37 pm (UTC)The main point I was trying to make about evacuations - and bear in mind that I've been through one, oncee, when I was 6 - is that people don't know what will happen next. Will you be in tents for 6 months? Who will make sure you have food, water, find your family or friends? The thigns is - we do not plan well for contingencies because the US is large enough and our natural events span a wide variety. This is a state issue, with federal aid, IMHO.
Last thought: the average US citizen watches a lot fo tv and last December/January we had copious coverage of the tsunami and aftermath. I might stay home to stay in (or believe I have) control of my own fate rather than end up lost in the system, handled by people who may be morons, corrupt, or plain igots without any true thought or feeling for hte people they are handling. But I am a cynic. I do own a car. I do have relatives and friends elsewhere...many of those in the destruction zone have no one ot turn to beyond the zone.
another $.02
Date: 2005-08-31 02:27 pm (UTC)Re: another $.02
Date: 2005-08-31 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 03:14 pm (UTC)The devastation down there is unfathomable. If I had money to spare to the Red Cross, I certainly would, but I can barely afford to feed myself as it is. The people down there, however, are in my thoughts.
I'm certainly not looking forward to the higher gas prices, but I can only imagine how hard it is for the people along the gulf coast, atop their cost of rebuilding and losing so much in assets, especially for people uninsured against flood.
As far as global warming is concerned, I don't think the U.S. is entirely to blame. China has become an equal industrial power, swallowing up resources just as quickly if not more quickly. Also, it's the world economy, not just our fault. As human race expands, more land and more resources are required. It would be nice, however, if people stepped back and decided on what was REALLY necessary to living instead of buying things they don't really need, or for luxury. But I don't think that will ever happen.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 03:35 pm (UTC)hey hon
Date: 2005-08-31 05:26 pm (UTC)1st POST OF HIS COMMENT
"On global warming, it saddens me how distorted the perception of climate change is. Since politicians have decided to jump onto it, they have damaged the slow work of scientists immensely, by spreading and consolidating wrong idead, and by letting very serious environmental threats to be totally forgotten.
For someone like me, vegetarian for the last 16 years, who made
a thesis in Italy on alternative energies, a master thesis in the US on the impact of congo forest deforestation.. and ph.d. thesis on the impact on climate of european-mediterranean deforestation.. to see ignorant politicians butchering the climate science with arrogant and wrong claims, is very upsetting..
The claim that hurricanes are caused by global warming is simply ludicrous. Hurricanes is a word that comes from Ancient Mayan.. Huracan. Please take the time to clic on
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gifs/atlhist_lowres.gif
The picture shows the number of hurricanes in the last 150
years. As you see, the record is still in the 1930s!
Incidentally, there have been periods (30s and 50s) which
hurricanes going as far north as New England. Still, the most devastating hurricane in US history is Galveston, which occurred in year 1900. I am sure that many `believers' that hurricanes are caused by global warming would like to destroy this picture.
Obviously hurricanes are affected by cllimate change, but how this happens, and on what scales, it is a complete unknown thing at this time.
On the global warming issue.. these are the FACTS for a
scientist like me..
1) The Eart temperature has increased of about 0.5 Celsius in the last century
2) Carbon dioxide has increased of about 10% in the last century, from 0.030 to 0.033%.
3) Atmospheric sciences tell us that carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases which reduces the amount of infrared emission from earth to space, thus slowing the earth cooling.. If the CO2 doubled, the Earth's climate would be undoubtably be warmer..
BUT
4) there have been phases in human history which were far warmer than present.. the so-called hypsithermal (4000-7000 years ago) and even the warm medioeval phase (around 1000 years ago). During that time, from pollen evidence, we know that there were standing trees in Iceland (not present now), Greenland was far more vegetated, and oak tree grew in nborthern Scandinavia (absent now because it's too cold).
5) there have been phases in the planet history in which carbon dioxide was HUNDREDS of times higher than present.. (i.e., in dynosaurs time)
What this means: it means that climate and carbon dioxide BOTH have natural variations, to which the human contribution is ADDED. Humans are by no means the -ONLY- agent in controlling climate, and the actual amount of control is not clear yet.
However, we MUST be very careful for the future, and it is unwise to emit carbon dioxide without considering it as a problem....
But how to do that.. well, that's where Kyoto comes out.
Who are the largest producers of carbon dioxide.. China, India, Brazil, and then the United States. If you take western Europe as a country, it actually produces far more than the US. But the
Kyoto protocol exempts China, India, Brasil to do anything to reduce their emissions, (because they are developing nations), and treats Europe as individual countries, putting threasholds of emissions which make very easy for all European nations to comply.
So the Kyoto protocol (which was NOT written by scientists) is a carefully designed document meant only to damage the US image.
Re: hey hon
Date: 2005-08-31 05:26 pm (UTC)I would be very happy to see a revised version of it which treats all the countries more fairly.. putting a burden on China especially, which is at this time the least environmentally concerned country in the world.
MOST IMPORTANT.
There are at least TWO MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IMMENSELY
MORE IMMEDIATE AND SERIOUS, which are
1) DEFORESTATION
and
2) URBAN and INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION.
DEFORESTATION CHANGES CLIMATE DRAMATICALLY, but not because
-like media say- the trees control carbon dioxide... There is a much more
IMMEDIATE effect...
Go in August at noon to an empty parking lot under the sun. Warm, ins't it?
Then go in the middle of a thick forest.. much coooler, right?
Well, in more scientific terms, the FORESTS CONTROL THE
ENERGY BALANCE OF THE EARTH SURFACE. The main reason is that the
soil in a forest is saturated (with water) and most of the solar
energy is used to make such water to evaporate, which makes
the forest much cooler (the so-called latent heat of evaporation).
If you cut the forest, the solar radiation goes straight into warming
the surface,.. so the net result is that you stop having evaporation
from the ground and you get a much warmer place.
There are literally HUNDREDS of papers which show clearly that
many locations on Earth (like the Mediterranean regions and souther
Europe) experience a much warmer and drier climate in summer
BECAUSE of the deforestation occurred in historical times.
Look at a picture from satellite, showing the forested areas in the world, and imagine to expand these forests of 30%, as it was 100 years ago. WOULDN'T THIS THING ALONE HAVE A MAJOR IMPACT ON CLIMATE?
Well, this incredibly serious problem is IGNORED by the Kyoto
protocol, and by most of global warming activists, who blame
carbon dioxide to be the only culprit of climate change!!!!!!!
The second problem is URBAN and INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION.
The global warming activists keep calling carbon dioxide a pollutant,
which is false. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, not a pollutant.
Pollutant is by definition something harmful to biology,
and CO2 is an essential part of photsynthesis.. So pollutants
are for example HEAVY METALS, SULPHIDES and various compounds
of Nitrogen. Pollutants KILL..... humans and wildlife.
Well, in this perspective, the US is enormously more environmental
concerned then Europe. Europe has been using gasoline with
lead until 2002.. the US abolished that in the 80s.
Europe and China are the two largest producers of sulphides,
which are responsbile for the ACID RAINS. Besides the damage
to lumbs, and the many respiratory diseases found in industrial
cities in Europe and China there is an immense amount of forest loss caused by ACID RAINS.
Well, ACID RAINS ARE NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE KYOTO
PROTOCOL.
Finally.. between the products of INDUSTRIAL and URBAN POLLUTION
there is SOOT. The amazing discovery from recent years is that there
is an increase of soot concentration in all the glaciers of the northern hemisphere. The soot, even if invisible by naked eye, causes the ice to be `slightly' less white.. which is not irrelevant because this changes the reflectivity.. This means that ice in this century is capable of reflecting less solar radiation, thus melting faster.
This would perhaps explain the big mistery on WHY inner
Antarctic glaciers are not melting.. but they are indeed thickening..
whereas ALL the glaciers, from the tropics to the Arctic, are drastically reducing..
Re: hey hon
Date: 2005-08-31 05:27 pm (UTC)And of course when a glacier melts, for whatever reason, this DOES cause a dramatic local warming, which affects also the global temperature. So the overall picture of global warming is very complex.
MY CONCLUSION is that surely climate change has an anthropogenic
part, but in this part deforestation is the first player, carbon dioxide comes after, and there are even more minor players, like soot and also indirect effects such as acid rains, which indirectly destroy forests. A really well planned international proposal should take ALL these players into account..
Hope this does not bore you too much.,.. :-))"
[MEANS: obviously, my friend really doesn't want the Kyoto Protocol to be ratified for many reasons... but he works on model-forecasting for hurricanes so I think he's well-versed on that front. As for New Orleans... no idea what they can do... the city's below sea level, right? My empathy is for the indigent who couldn't get out on time due to lack of cars, etc, & I wonder what will happen to those communities if/when they have the means to rebuild... if, that is, they even survived.]
Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-08-31 06:59 pm (UTC)I don't disagree with the priorities stated, but then why do I keep hearing about temperature fluctuations, studies of the arctic, and storms?
Re: Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-08-31 07:15 pm (UTC)i don't think scientists dispute global warming, but oreste's point is that the conditions causing it haven't necessarily created more storms.
Re: Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-08-31 07:21 pm (UTC)I just heard, in the media, that plankton levels in the Pacific are at historic lows and 1/3 of the Ches bay is filled with dead zones due to "fertilizer runnoff" upstream. I know anecdotally, from people who live way out there, that the fertilizer is often chicken-poo, which is liquified and sprayed on fields of all sorts to get rid of it. When it rains, that poo goes into the bay.
Not scientific, but directly study or interview is time consuming and not worthwhile for those who have small individual impacts on the situations in question. At least I'm not sucking from the teat of FOX?
I've seen the storm claims on news articles, but I can't cite them off the top of my head. Doesn't make either him or them wrong - I just don't know.
Re: Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-08-31 07:57 pm (UTC)don't fault me for being an idealist... LOL... it's just the perceptive lens through which I try to view the world.
That said, I'd like better news sources myself. what online sites do you use?
Re: Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-08-31 11:36 pm (UTC)Idealist...that is hard to define. I tend to think that humanity is doing horrible things to the environment for selfish reasons - which the views you posted from your friend seem to support, only in slightly different ways than the ones I put forth. I like the views, but they are similar to my own - they call for solutions I already believe in.
Typically I'm collecting information from Rueters, AP, Yahoo headlines, and various weirdo sources that my LJ friends pop up (discounting activist sites if not ignoring completely).
Re: Thanks for the detailed response
Date: 2005-09-01 02:58 am (UTC)but then I listen to my friend who's at the Nature Conservancy and she's working on some marvelous projects to recover land... to preserve species.... etc. they are donations-based although they get federal funding, i think.
memory's fading. I just want the passenger pidgeon back, & chestnut trees. I'll email the 'back door' site to NASA -- it's essentially the Dirt On NASA, & it's fairly interesting
Re: hey hon
Date: 2005-08-31 09:41 pm (UTC)