Latest reports indicate 95% destruction at the base – which is where most of the Hurricane Watch planes are based. Presumably they flew the planes out before the storm.
couple more items below…
“Home of the premier electronics and communications training center in the Air Force.”
There was a huge military training hospital at the base with 2000 staff – 2nd largest military hospital in US, if I understand correctly.
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A damaged gas platform burns Wednesday about eight miles off the coast from Buras in the Gulf of Mexico.
The reality of life after Katrina is setting in for evacuees, shelter providers, officials, first responders and the entire nation.
As conditions in New Orleans deteriorate, everyone involved is realizing the heavy toll of evacuating a major American city.
Area hospitals admitted critically ill patients airlifted from New Orleans-area hospitals that could no longer care for them.
Lafayette, one of the closest fully-operable cities, is bursting at the seams. Infrastructures are being re-invented on the fly.
In quiet and often heroic ways, people are working toward recognizing and meeting needs of thousands who have, for the moment, lost all means to support themselves.
[…]
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PLANS FOR EMERGENCY NOT IN PLACE
As U.S. military engineers struggled to shore up breached levees, experts in the Netherlands expressed surprise that New Orleans’ flood systems failed to restrain the raging waters.
With half of the country’s population of 16 million living below sea level, the Netherlands prepared for a “perfect storm” soon after floods in 1953 killed 2,000 people. The nation installed massive hydraulic sea walls.
“I don’t want to sound overly critical, but it’s hard to imagine that the damage caused by Katrina could happen in a Western country,” said Ted Sluijter, spokesman for the park where the sea walls are exhibited. “It seemed like plans for protection and evacuation weren’t really in place, and once it happened, the coordination was on loose hinges.”
See my comment yesterday! ◊ by Oui
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GLOBAL WARMING
The sympathy was muted in some corners by a sense that the United States reaped what it sowed, since the country is seen as the main contributor to global warming.
Joern Ehlers, a spokesman for World Wildlife Fund Germany, said global warming had increased the intensity of hurricanes. “The Americans have a big impact on the greenhouse effect,” Ehlers said.
(Related story: Scientists: Global warming pumps up storms)
But Harlan L. Watson, the U.S. envoy for negotiations on climate change, denied any link between global warming and the strength of storms. “Our scientists are telling us right now that there’s not a linkage,” he said in Geneva. “I’ll rely on their information.”
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The main drivers of hurricane energy are sea temperature (the warmer it is, the worse it is), and speed of motion over warm sea area (the slower it is, the more energy the storm picks up).
The first – sea temp – is an indirect function of global warming.
“Our scientists” in this case presumably meaning the Bush League’s scientists (and the energy industry’s scientists — same thing), rather than US scientists.
To be absolutely bend-over-backward fair, one can’t honestly tie Katrina directly to global warming. On the other hand, assuming that there is something to global warming / climate change theories — and that looks pretty fuckin’ likely — the net effect is increasingly dramatic weather patterns, which may well have fed into Katrina.
It would be unconscionably cruel — especially to the victims — to imply in any way that the US “deserved” this. But I could understand if people frustrated with our behavior and our leaders’ policies found this a bit … for lack of a better word … poetic.
Jet stream, water temperature, ocean sinks.
Sinks such as the Labrador Sink pull down Gulf Stream currents into deep ocean for a 10,000 year journey under the Atlantic – during which they cool and come up off W. Africa with a lot of nutrients.
The Labrador Sink is sputtering. If it stops, the warm water/air associated with it do not cross the N. Atlantic to heat N. Europe. I presume warm water would linger off US E. Seaboard ready to power hurricanes that could spin their way all up the coast.
Sharks, and many fish, are a good indication of changes in general water temp. Diff species tend to stay in areas of temps within a strict range. Migrations into new waters have been noted in many species.
The mean temps of many oceans are changing – not all increasing.
Then you have to add salinity changes. Freshwater melt from the Arctic will change the salinity of NW Atlantic with unknown effects when mixed into all the other changes.
All told, the weather machine is immensely, perhaps unknowably complex. Nobody really can yet model it. But one thing is for sure – we are seeing the beginning of changes that will affect how we all live. Peanuts maybe compared with previous cataclysmic shifts in the history of earth, but huge, nevertheless.
The peak of the hurricane season occurs, historically, around 12th September – and continues until November. We must hope that the NO tragedy will not be compounded
What worries me is that civilization as it currently exists is more fragile than most people realize. We may be seeing a glimpse of that with NO, Biloxi, et al, and it will be educational to see how that plays out in terms of how we handle it. (Hard to tell yet, but so far, not so good.)
But if there are big changes, and particularly if weather patterns change and intensify, what then? Can we handle two or three Katrinas a year? Plus possibly more intense heat waves, plus possibly shorter but nastier winters, etc, etc?
A strengthened FEMA is the least of what we’ll need. We need to start taking steps ASAP to decentralize/localize as much of our civilization infrastructure as possible, especially — but not at all limited to — energy production and distribution. Ditto food, manufacturing, and so on and so forth. Globalization is great when we’re talking about intangibles like knowledge and ideas and a web of cultures, but it will not work in a world of change to have material supply lines that go halfway around the world.
That only works well now for the people at the top of the heap, and even for them it won’t last. Between climate change and the end of cheap oil, it just won’t work.
God forbid what might still happen there – but all this can be laid at the feet of Bush and his band of total incompetents.
The Superdome ties in every rotten stinking failure of the Administration: Kyoto, Homeland Security!, Fema, Equal rights, compassionate conservatism, amateur management, lack of focus, the chateaubriand barrel (pork barrel for the super-rich), poverty action, medicaid etc, Halliburton (rebuilding NO), privatization.
The only thing it is not directly connected to is Iraq, except for the very small matter of the LA National Guard and a lot of their equipment not being available for NO.
The Chimp is going down.
On the other hand, assuming that there is something to global warming / climate change theories — and that looks pretty fuckin’ likely
It’s beyond likely, at least as far as global warming is concerned — that’s an indisputable fact. What’s open to debate is the exact extent and dynamics of human contribution to global warming, and that’s not nearly as open to debate as the doubters would like us to believe.
Either way, whether it’s Iraq or hurricanes, an awful lot of people are being killed or left destitute by the energy industry.
if hearing are held about what could have been better about planning and response in our own country. Iraq has bled us dry.
to expose the litany of historical incompetence from Numbskull Bush and his cronies. This will play out for months, if not years, because NO will be a constant reminder that what America needs is professional managers, not born-again whackos/slimeball spinmeisters/neo-fascist hardballs/geriatric visionaries or just plain evil, greedy, mindfucked crusaders. Not to mention religious zealots without a thread of compassion about them.
But we can wait. First help the desperate victims of incompetence, then we can have fun.
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NASA – Hurricane Center
Meltdown :: OSU researcher tracks the world’s largest tropical glacier before it succumbs to global warming.
A nice historic reference and easy to understand.
Another important indicator is the St. Lawrence Seaway on the Canadian border.
It appears that the thermohaline circulation belt can be easily disrupted. It is driven by the extra salt and higher water density in the North Atlantic. If something disturbs that, then the whole system can shut off. If shut down, then there would be rapid cooling in the North Atlantic region. Hence, the many flips in climate seen in the ice cores from Greenland are believed to be linked to this thermohaline circulation system (Broecker, 1997).
What could shut this system down? Some link the Younger Dryas with changes in drainage, e.g., meltwater streams breakthrough to the North Atlantic via the St. Lawrence seaway and chill the surface ocean waters causing ice to expand and the ocean circulation to weaken (Hidore, 1996: 70). Others see evidence for collapsing ice sheets. Stratigraphic evidence from the North Atlantic and Antarctica suggest that large continental ice sheets become unstable and surge into the ocean creating an armada of icebergs (Heinrich Events). This cools the surface of the oceans and diminishes thermohaline circulation, which in turn leads to further cooling. Eventually the icebergs melt, the thermohaline circulation belt resumes, and there is a resumption of warming (Broecker 1994; Blanchon, 1995).
IPCC Reports – Coastal Areas
I personally view the climate systems and ocean conveyer belt similar to an analog amplifier with feedback. Minor changes on input balance will cause major swings in output, thus what the world will witness as climate change. This has been documented in ice formations and no one has the power to match the forces of nature once a shift starts happening.
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