Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 39662
Berkeley CSUA MOTD
 
WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ
http://csua.com/feed/
2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

2005/9/13 [Science/Disaster, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Recreation/Travel/Nola] UID:39662 Activity:nil
9/13    New Orleans: A Green Genocide
        http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19418
        \_ This is posted by jblack
2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

You may also be interested in these entries...
2012/10/29-12/4 [Science/Disaster, Computer/SW/Languages/Java, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:54516 Activity:nil
10/29   Go Away Sandy.
        \_ Sorry, Coursera is performing preventive maintenance for this
           class site ahead of Hurricane Sandy. Please check back in 15 minutes.
           class site ahead of Hurricane Sandy. Please check back in 15
           minutes.
        \_ Bitch.
	...
2009/12/2-26 [Science/Disaster] UID:53559 Activity:low
12/2    So I am trying to convince my company to take disaster planning
        more seriously. Does anyone have any hard numbers on how often
        data centers fail? I mean blow up, burn down, flood, etc, with
        total loss of all services for an extended period of time.
        \_ hard numbers tend to be SEKRET.  But check out Yahoo's recent
           outage and UltraDNS' outage.  Those were both pretty bad.
	...
2008/1/4-7 [Science/Disaster] UID:48891 Activity:nil
1/4     Are storm, hurricane and typhoon all the same thing?
        \_ A typhoon is a hurricane in the Pacific.
           \_ Except when it's in the Eastern Pacific, where it's called
              a hurricane.
        \_ A hurricane has to reach a certain rotational speed (80mph?) before
           it officially is recorded as a hurricane.  Lower than that it is
	...
2007/12/12-20 [Science/Space, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:48793 Activity:moderate
12/12   "Ominous Arctic melt worries experts"
        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_sc/arctic_melt
        \_ Global warming is a liberal lie.
        \_ Isn't the antarctic ice growing?
           \_ You mean like how the area of the antarctic ice shelf
              has radically shrunk and huge icebergs have broken off?
	...
2007/10/10-14 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:48287 Activity:low
10/10   My google-fu is weak.  Can anyone point me to the 11 items the UK court
        ruled had to be pointed out as errors in "An Inconvenient Truth"?
        \_ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
        \_ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2632660.ece
        \_ Here's some more for you based on my prior research.  I don't have
           anything to add on the other items I don't mention:
	...
2010/1/21-29 [Reference/Religion, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:53653 Activity:nil
1/20    So I want to give some money to Haiti relief funds and my employer
        \_ SOCIALISM
        is willing to match it, but I am not really that big a fan of
        The Red Cross (they take your donations and then spend them
        however they like, not neccessarily on what you gave it to them for).
        Who else is a good charity? UNICEF?
	...
2010/1/20-21 [Reference/Religion, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:53642 Activity:very high
1/20    So I want to give some money to Haiti relief funds and my employer
        is willing to match it, but I am not really that big a fan of
        The Red Cross (they take your donations and then spend them
        however they like, not neccessarily on what you gave it to them for).
        Who else is a good charity? UNICEF?
        \- I believe after some criticism the Red Cross is better about
	...
2010/1/4-19 [Politics/Domestic/911] UID:53611 Activity:moderate
1/4     Why the fascination with blowing up airplanes? Airports have tight
        security. It doesn't seem worth it. It's far easier to derail a
        train or set off explosives in a crowded place like a theater or
        sporting event. As many or more people will be killed and it will
        still make the news. I don't get why all of our security, and
        apprently much of the terrorist's resources, is focused on airplanes.
	...
2009/2/25-3/3 [Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan] UID:52635 Activity:nil
2/25    Thank you Obama for pledging to reverse much of Reagan's economic
        mess. Thank you!
        http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/analysis.obama.reagan
        http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-219640
        \_ About time. The last 25 years have been a disaster for the middle
           class.
	...
2009/2/9-15 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:52538 Activity:low
2/9     GOP may be "winning" stimulus debate on TeeVee, but they're losing quite
        badly with the public:
        http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/another-poll-shows-public-approving-obama-disapproving-gop-on-stimulus.php
        http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/poll-obama-way-ahead-of-gop-on-stimulus.php
        \_ Uh, the support for the pork package is falling, and now the CBO
           says we'll get out of the recession without a stimulus.
	...
Cache (7900 bytes)
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19418
President Bushs ecological policies, a m ainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact : Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that ma y have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left pursuing its agend a of valuing wetlands and topographical diversity over human life sued t o prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that woul d have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katri na. In the 1970s, the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain and Vic inity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two s trategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexic o from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. article in t he May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, Under the original p lan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf int o Lake Pontchartrain. into La ke Pontchartrain, declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of Ne w Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers and Professor Stone were not the only people cognizant of the consequences that could and did result beca use of the environmental activists. While speaking with Sean Hannity on his radio show on Labor Day, former Louisiana Congressman and Speaker of the House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litig ation prevented hurricane prevention projects. In other words, unlike other programs including the ones leftists like Si d Blumenthal excoriated the president for not funding these construction s might have prevented the loss of life experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the Times-Picayune wrote, Those plans we re abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartr ain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the are a surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. recollection of thi s case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfid ious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dr eaded capitalist investment. On December 30, 1977, US District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. an injunction against the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartra in hurricane protection project, demanding the engineers draw up a secon d environmental impact statement, three years after the corps submitted the first one. is necessary to protect the citizens of New Orleans from a hurricane. Despite this, the judge ruled in favor of the environmentalists. Ultimat ely, the project was aborted in favor of building up existing levees. However, the old plan lived on in the minds of those who put human beings first. The Army Corps of Engineers as recently as last year had publicl y discussed resuming the practice. The September-October 2004 edition of Riverside (the magazine of the New Orleans District Army Corps of Engin eers Public Affairs Office) referred to this lawsuit and project. Eric L incolns article titled, Old Plans Revived for Category 5 Hurricane Prote ction, stated: In 1977, plans for hurricane protection structures at the Rigolets and Ch ef Menteur Pass were sunk when environmental groups sued the district. T hey believed that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address several potential problems, including impacts on Lake Pontchartr ains ecosystem and damage to wetlands. Ultimately, an agreement between the parties resulted in a consent decree to forego the structures at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur PassThe new i nitial feasibility study will look at protecting the area between the Pe arl River and Mississippi River from a Category 5 storm. lternatives that would be studied in the initial fe asibility report are: Construction of floodgate structures, with environ mental modifications, at Rigolets and Chef Pass. using more environmentally sensitive construc tion than was previously available. This time the Army Corps of Engineer s would modify the original plans because of the environmentalists. Howe ver, the project was already delayed more than two decades because of th e environmentalists lawsuit. If begun immediately it would take another two decades to complete: a 40-year delay caused by the Green Left. Planning for a category five hurricane was, indeed, visionary thinking. F ew people believed such a storm would take place more often than once ev ery few centuries, and no one had the political will to fight for the fu nding such a project would necessitate. However, scientists had long war ned about New Orleans vulnerability to the potential for massive loss of life caused by such things as the environmentalists lawsuit. Nati onal Geographic article, written after a smaller hurricane last year, ca ptured the sentiments of one such expert: The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before lan dfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours coming from the worst direction, says Joe Suhayda, a retired coas tal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studyi ng the coastI dont think people realize how precarious we are. As it turned out, this is exactly how events played out during the next h urricane, one year later. USA Today noted, the levees the government had constructed were no match for the vortex of this force of nature. The sp illing water then undermined the walls, and they toppledLake Pontchartra in, a body half the size of Rhode Island, was losing about a foot of wat er every 10 hours into New Orleans. The ever-rising water soon mixed with sewage, creating a toxic liquid mixture that burned the skin on contact. When the flood levels grounded the city buses Mayor Ray Nagin never deployed, it denied thousands of New Orleans poorest and fe eblest an escape. Despite the mayors apparent incompetence, these floodgates environmental activists sued to prevent from being constructed may have kept a flood f rom consuming the city to the extent it did in the first place. The curr ent programs aimed at reinforcing existing levees but would only prove e ffective against a level three hurricane; they were not adequate for a l evel five storm like Katrina. Moreover, they did not fortify the specifi c areas the government sought to protect, to keep Lake Pontchartrain fro m flooding the entire city, which everyone knew posed a danger to a city below sea level. In other words, this plan would have saved thousands o f lives and kept one of the nations greatest cities from lying in ruins for a decade. At a minimum, such a plan would have staved off a significant portion of the disaster thats unfolded before our eyes. Worse yet, the environmentalists ultimate decision to reinforce existing levees may have actually further harmed the Big Easy. There is at least one expert who claims the New Orleans levees made no difference in fact, they contributed to the problem. Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane C enter and Director of the Center for the Study Public Health Impacts by Hurricanes Ivor van Heerden said, The levees have literally starved our wetlands to death by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gu lf of Mexico. Thirty years after its legal action, Save Our Wetlands boasts, SOWL's le gacy lives on and on within the heart and spirit of every man, woman, ch ild, bird, red fish, speckle trout, croakers, etc. Despite its pious rhetoric, the environmental Lefts true legacy will be o n display in New Orleans for years to come.