APOCALYPSE NOW?
CREDIT THREAT TO THE USA
CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ

The latest: Levee breached for two blocks in the Big Easy

With 54 dead now confirmed in Mississippi, Katrina becomes a killer storm. There are many questions to be raised, but one rather significant one has been ignored in much of the media I have been watching and listening to:

IS THERE ANY LINK WITH CLIMATE CHANGE?

After Hurricane Ivan lashed this same region, the staff at the National Center for Atmospheric Research discussed this issue — way back in October 2004.

It took seconds to ask the question and for Google to cough up many viewpoints. If I could do it, why can’t my colleagues?.

Consider…

“It’s been an exceptional hurricane season in the Caribbean and U.S. Southeast, where a string of big storms left residents with hardly enough time to take the plywood off their windows after one hurricane before they had to hammer it up for the next. Millions went without power, at least 1,500 people died in Haiti alone, and the state of Florida is estimated to have $15 to $20 billion worth of damage.

“And so it comes as no surprise that the relentless line-up of storms has ignited debate about the connection between hurricanes and global warming. The issue attracted a fair amount of media attention in September, when newspapers ran headlines saying ‘Global Warming May Spawn More Super-Storms” and “Ivan May Just Be a Messenger.’

“From 1970 to 1994, hurricane activity in the Atlantic was fairly mild, generating half as many destructive storms as both the previous period, dating back to the 1920s, and the period since 1995. While the current period is the most active nine consecutive years on record and also contains some of the hottest years on record, climate scientists are divided on whether or not global warming affects hurricane activity.

“Kevin Trenberth (CGD) says that although it’s controversial, he thinks that global warming is in fact creating conditions that are favorable for hurricanes to be more severe. ‘Global climate change, and global warming in particular, create a different background environment in which the hurricanes are working,’ he says. ‘The sea surface temperatures are a little warmer, the whole environment is a bit wetter, there’s more humidity, and that’s the main fuel for hurricanes.’

“Warm water is the crucial fuel for hurricane formation. Water expands when heated, the way a full pot of water heated on the stove will overflow. The fact that global sea levels have risen 1.25 inches in the past ten years is evidence that oceans are getting warmer and expanding. When the sea surface temperature reaches 80°F or higher, it crosses a threshold for hurricane formation. Enough moisture evaporates into the atmosphere to trigger thunderstorms, which can in turn become tropical storms and hurricanes. The heat, released as water vapor, condenses in rainfall and fuels intensifying hurricanes.

“Although the warming of the oceans isn’t uniform around the globe, the mid-Atlantic and Caribbean oceans have in fact warmed significantly. Kevin and CGD colleagues John Fasullo and Lesley Smith are drafting a paper to report that water vapor levels are perhaps 15% higher on average in the Atlantic hurricane zone than they were about 30 years ago. He says the logical conclusion is that this increase will result in more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. ‘We’re not talking about changes in numbers of disturbances, only that the ones that do exist will be stronger and produce a lot more rain,’ he says.

“The hurricane season might also start earlier and last longer, Kevin says…”

www.ucar.edu

Just asking…

HOW CO$TLY? Stratfor reports:

“Very soon, the focus will shift from stunned awe at Mother Nature’s raw power to the dreary and painstaking work of damage assessment and repair. The storm passed directly over the Mississippi River’s mouth, raising the prospect that the main channel has shifted. Such a development would delay the reopening of the river until the channel could be resurveyed and likely dredged. Depending on the silting, that could take a few hours — or a few weeks. Add in damage to critical energy infrastructure and initial damage estimates, before a single assessor has put foot on soggy Louisianan ground, are at a floor of $30 billion.”

New York Times: Another Storm Casualty: Oil Prices

“The region that produces a major portion of the nation’soil and natural gas was largely shut down by Hurricane Katrina, further tightening strained energy markets.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/business/30oil.html?th&emc=th

COVERAGE

Was listening to public radio last night. Seems as if the BBC had a correspondent in New Orleans. NPR was instead at the emergency center in Baton Rouge. Why?

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

From Broadcasting & Cable:

“The crew of Wheel of Fortune had the misfortune of being in New Orleans Sunday in the path of Hurricane Katrina.”

http://email.BroadcastingCable.com/cgi-bin2/DM/y/enLj0LIJ2Z0Olt0CZVV0Ew

The trade mag also reports:

“Several local stations, including KHOU and WPMI, are blogging about the storm. One posting on Lost Remote says that WLOX is being hithard, with parts of its roof blown off and Internet access down.”

ARE WE LIVING ON BORROWED TIME — AND MONEY?

The Associated Press reports:

“Debt Load Makes Americans Vulnerable

“Buy now, pay later: It’s been the mantra of American consumers for decades. The results are obvious in the ballooning balances on credit cards and mortgage loans, and in the mushrooming U.S. trade deficit, which reflects the nation’s nearly insatiable appetite for cheap, imported goods.

“Low interest rates, especially since the end of the 2001 recession, have fed the debt beast at home, allowing American consumers to accumulate nearly $11 trillion in debt as they buy more homes, more cars, more clothes, more dinners out. At the same time, foreign investment in the United States is helping to keep the dollar strong, which holds down prices on those imports that Americans covet.

“But what would happen if interest rates suddenly weren’t so benign, or if foreign governments, corporations and individuals stopped investing so heavily in America? Some analysts fear such actions could trigger doomsday scenarios in which the bills come d! ue and Americans can’t pay, with devastating consequences for the entire economy.”

REQUEST: I am doing a new film project on credit. If you have had serious credit card problems or worked for a credit card company and have a story to tell, please get in touch.

STOP THE IRAQ CIVIL WAR?

How can the looming civil war in Iraq be stopped? George Monbiot has some ideas in his latest column in The Guardian:

“Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow of occupation. Whatever the parliamentarians in Iraq do to try to prevent total meltdown, their efforts are compromised by the fact that their power grows from the barrel of someone else’s gun. When George Bush picked up the phone last week to urge the negotiatiors to sign the constitution, he reminded Iraqis that their representatives - though elected - remain the administrators of his protectorate. While US and British troops stay in Iraq, no government there can make a undisputed claim to legitimacy. Nothing can be resolved in that country until our armies leave.

“This is by no means the only problem confronting the people who drafted Iraq’s constitution. The refusal by the Shias and the Kurds to make serious compromises on federalism, which threatens to deprive the central, Sunni-dominated areas of oil revenues, leaves the Sunnis with little choice but to reject the agreement in October’s referendum. If this happens, the result could be civil war.

“Can anything be done? It might now be too late. But it seems to me that the transitional assembly has one last throw of the dice. This is to abandon the constitution it has signed, and Bush’s self-serving timetable, and start again with a different democratic design…

“Last week George Bush, echoed in the Guardian by Clinton’s former intelligence adviser Philip Bobbitt, compared the drafting process in Baghdad to the construction of the American constitution. If they believe that the comparison commends itself to the people of Iraq, they are even more out of touch than I thought. But it should also be obvious that we now live in more sceptical times…

“Deliberative democracy is not a panacea. You can have fake participatory processes just as you can have fake representative ones.But it is hard to see why representation cannot be tempered by participation. Why should we be forbidden to choose policies, rather than just parties or entire texts? Can we not be trusted? If not, then what is the point of elections? The age of purely representative democracy is surely over. It is time the people had their say.”

www.monbiot.com

YOUR COMMENTS

From a cry by Linda Milazzo: ‘America: Civil? Or War?’

“Today I sit before my television, not as a progressive, not as an anti-war activist, not as a woman perennially hoarse from shouting ‘End the War’ and ‘Bring Them Home.’ Today I sit before my television as an American, itching to get on a plane to pull people from their rooftops and find them a soft place to rest. I’ve made several calls to a longtime Los Angeles friend who hales from the imperiled Big Easy. I’ve offered my Los Angeles home to her very large family should they seek domicile in this, the other LA. I don’t care if they’re Republican. I don’t worry if they support Mr. Bush. I just know that they could use the help. I know they are victims of a much greater power which they have never once harmed. And that is all that matters.

“Only yesterday I was concerned about the neighbors who oppose me. Only yesterday I debated a conservative Christian friend. Only yesterday I feared violence toward my CodePink sisters who were instrumental in building Camp Casey. I had good reason to worry. Days earlier I’d met the rolling PR caravan devised by Republican publicists, Russo Marsh and Rogers. I’d witnessed its hostility first hand at a staged PR event in beautiful downtown Burbank. There I watched as Deborah Johns, Republican sponsored Marine mom, expressed a desire to disrupt the peaceful vision of Camp Casey and deny Cindy Sheehan her right to question Bush.

“My left ear still rings from that American on American encounter, where a fifty-something man whistled loudly in my ear in an attempt to rupture my eardrum. Not once, not twice, but as often as he could. Isn’t this what an enemy does… sneak up on the opponent with the purpose to do harm? This he did. He, my fellow American…”

PRISONER OF TECHNOLOGY

My tech blues continue, latest problem — can’t open WORD. As a result, I had to truncate today’s blog.

Happy B-Day to my colleague Sonny Youn.

Comments welcome. Write: Dissector@mediachannel.org