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Too Many People in Nature's Way
Ant writes "Wired News report that the dead and the desperate of New Orleans now join the farmers of Aceh and the fishermen of Trincomalee, villagers in Iran and the slum dwellers of Haiti in a world being dealt ever more punishing blows by natural disasters... ... "We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado. "The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet."
By one critical measure, the impact on populations, statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. More than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials reported at a conference on disaster prevention in January.
Those numbers don't include millions displaced by last December 2004's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people as its monstrous waves swept over coastlines from Indonesia's Aceh province to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and beyond. By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor.
But generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way, said Thomas Loster, a Munich Re expert. "More and more people are being hit," he said..." I'd also like to point out a project here to find housing for Katrina's victims; it tries to combine lists of sites offering housing, and do a meta-search.
As populations grow, they are going to move into more and more dangerous areas. Given the relative shortness of the human lifespan, any major environmental disaster that occurs with periodicity of more than 30-40 years is going to have humans living in its path. (because humans tend to forget things through generations) Unfortunately since these events are so rare, it is hard to prepare for them. That said, people seem to focus on these things right after a disaster. Remember the New Orleans disaster is one of the largest distructive forces to hit the continental US, regardless of population.
-Sean (OutdoorDB - the Outdoor Wiki)
Big flood along the Mississippi? OK...we'll just abandon it, and not bother to use the river. Fire in San Fran? Screw it...It'll just burn again eventually. Hurricanes? Ok...Abandon every city within 50 miles of the coast from Galveston to Baltimore, and the entire state of F1orida.
Oft times, the really useful places are where they might be destroyed by some natural disaster.
You had people all over the US talking about how third world uncivilized people deserved the tsunami. And people like michael savage etc. saying no federal aid should be sent to help other countries. Being libertarian, I can agree that with the concept of federal assistance being bad, I dont see why he has a vitriolic resentment of it considering how miniscule the foreign aid budget is (especially after you deduct military assistance to high income countries that somehow counts as "aid"). After the tsunami, I even came across a weblog (ernie i think) that said something to the effect of "those civilizations have been around for thousands of years longer than us and didnt advance so they deserved it. Too bad, f*ck 'em".
/fox) reported a blatant lie that foreign countries didnt step up to offer aid and assistance for new orleans.
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.. but a vast majority of people are there because they didnt have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
Like every single individuals and kids who died or were orphaned had done stuff to deserve what happened to them.
And then there was the radio show host who said he didnt care about people who couldn't swim.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katrina.world.ai
The point I am making is that you have a large segment (thankfully not the majority) of the US population who thinks the rest of the world is all evil and can go to hell. These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there
By way of example our individual physiologies as systems experience runaway in terms of sexual orgasam ( ya sex, more people ) and in terms of death.
We're not only pushing the envelope in terms of population, we're also pushing the food chain that sustains us. The oceans are being fished clean to feed the growing population. It's not unlikely that the ocean food chain will collapse in our lifetime. Add in global warming and the projected more frequent, more violent storms; mix in our proclivity to live in large numbers on the coast lines, and, the recipe for disaster is all but made, no need to add in a killer like a super volcano.
The lesson of New Orleans is that we can't handle relatively mid range disasters. We speak of the first world in terms of Super Powers in quasi mythological terms that suggest we control nature. We're just outlaw apes broken free of our natural constraints and deluded in belief systems that talk to our immortality as mirror images of the creator of the universe.
The joke about to go very bad. May you live in interesting times.
cheers
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
> New Orleans has been there for a very long time.
Yeah and strangely enough the old part of the city isn't flooded that bad. How is that possible? Because a long time ago people were smart enough to build their houses above sea level.
I'm living in the Netherlands, well known because a big part of the country is below sea level. We have the same problem here, people building their homes next to big rivers, and then complain if their property gets flooded. Because of some big floods over the last ten years, there are now plans to create enormous backup water bassins, so we can leave the water somewhere if the rivers get too high.
It occurs to me that one application of technology to ameliorate the less desirable effects of nature is in Early Warning Systems as built on top of a GIS. (Good example here)
Not to contradict Miletti, but there are very clear cases where technology in the configuration I described above has done real work averting disasters.
There's such a system deployed by the Civil Defense in Peru, that's one I know about. We're demoing another one at a GIS conference in Cairo next week, that's another. If I understand things correctly, even Homeland Security has done work in this area.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
FEMA even discourages rebuilding in the disaster areas. But it seems that wealthy people build expensive houses in repeatedly flooded areas and get the Goverment to bail them out time after time. It may be just my perception though, since I have sense enough to not build where the water can reach, and am not privy to their finances.
From an agrarian point of view the answer is obvious - river floodplain silt is usually excellent for growing (ask the Egyptians and the Dutch.) But how many of the people trapped in New Orleans were agriculturalists? I suspect none.
Living as I do at an elevation of 80M above mean sea level, on a slope with excellent drainage, I take a very philosophical view of this. But I can't help thinking that we are still organising our world according to the preoccupations of much less advanced societies- and that the time to start doing something was over a hundred years ago, but the longer we leave it the worse it will get. London and New York could suffer various degrees of damage when the Azores slippage occurs. The effect of losing two of the world's major financial markets would not be good, considerably worse than losing some refinery capability (if Bush wasn't making so much money out of the windfall profits to the oil companies, he _could_ ration US fuel supplies and reduce prices, but you cannot dole out access to cash and credit and keep a modern society running.) How much would it actually cost in real money - not virtual profits - to plan to relocate the world's major financial and trade centers to safer locations?
The present situation is predicated on the idea that the rich will always suffer minimally in disasters. If my house is swept away or flattened I will have several options as to where to live while it is rebuilt, while the poor won't. But there are disaster scenarios that impact the rich as well as the poor, by making their savings and investment worthless and creating a breakdown in society which will enable criminals to steal possessions - think of the Jews in 30s Germany. If we don't guard against these, we are truly asking for it.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I think you are close but your logic is flawed.
Citizens are not "taught" to hate taxes. Taxed are a form of theft by the government through coercion. 60% of what I make is going to support other people, other agendas, or straight into corrupt pockets. I didn't need to be "taught" that, it is basic self-defense!
Politics is at it's core, corrupt. Any large project is almost doomed to fail because of that corruption and lack of controls that being funded by the government enables.
You think the hand-wringing over Katrina is bad, wait until the Boston Big Dig collapses. Billions wasted and the problem not solved.
A couple of thoughts - Democracy is the the worst form of government - except for the all the others.
Free market is the worst form of resource distribution - except for all the others.
Both statements stem from the fact that democracy and free market recognise that people work best from self-interest, not coercion. Most of the evils of the world stem from the perversion and corruption of self-interest. This includes a businessman bribing an official to coerce or corrupt.
Free markets and capitialism in a pure form can hurt people but only in the way that a bell curve shows that some things are less than other things. Not everything is equal and some will have more than others. How they get it and what is "fair" or the best way to distribute is the question. Government in all forms as they exist today is clearly NOT the answer.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I live in a town which has several layers of 'new' built on each other. When the town was founded, there was a small trader town named 'Drezdany' (old slawish for: those living at the river banks). To protect the bridge crossing the river, at the other bank a castle was built which subsequently attracted settlers around it. This small settlement was thus called Neuendresden (New Dresden), as opposed to the old trader town Drezdany, now called Altendresden (Old Dresden). :)
After several heavy firestorms were destroying Old Dresden, it got a completely new designed block layout, with wide streets and firewalls between the single houses. This then was called Dresden-Neustadt (Dresden New Town), thus turning the former New Dresden into Dresden-Altstadt (Dresden Old Town).
In the 19th century the town grow out of its city walls, creating new suburbs behind the old limits, so Dresden-Neustadt became two parts: Dresden-Innere Neustadt (Inner New Town) and Dresden-Aeussere Neustadt (Outer New Town). Dresden Altstadt kept its name, the new suburbs were instead called Vorstaedte (Suburbs) according to the direction they were: Pirnaische Vorstadt (suburb in direction to Pirna [another town]), Suedvorstadt (southern suburb) etc.pp.
In WW II, most of Dresden's Old Town got destroyed, and except for solitude buildings re-erected because of their representative or historical value, most of Dresden-Altstadt now is in fact a new town, even with a new block layout. To see the historic, old downtown, you have to go to Dresden-Neustadt (New Town).
As you can see: There is nothing impossible with naming a new town
The planetary hazards have been here for millions of years. I believe the collective human population to be increasingly stoopid.
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Depending on how you look at it, California isn't mitigating more. Only 13% of Californians have earthquake insurance. That's clear indication that Californians themselves take a relaxed attitude about earthquakes.
Quite right!
My wakeup call to this came from living in Okinawa, Japan which gets hit by 3 to 6 Katrina force storms every year. Everything on the island is built from solid concrete with bars across all the windows.
The locals actually had huge Typhoon sales at their shopping malls and threw big parties since they didn't have to work.
The rare deaths that occur during the storms are far more often related to people deserving Darwin awards than actual "victems" of the storms.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Memphis is the next major city on the Mississipi River, hundreds of miles before St. Louis, and I'm sure FedEx would LOVE to jump in on the extra shipping/warehousing of goods.
:p
We are on a pretty nasty fault line, though
Without the barrier islands, New Orleans needs even bigger and stronger levees to stay above water. The existing system was intended to resist only a Cat 3 hurricane, and that was with the barrier islands in place to slow down the storm surge. With them gone, a relatively minor hurricane could swamp the city again. And minor hurricanes come through all the time. There might even be another one this year. So the city really can't be reoccupied until new, stronger, levees are in place.
There will be some rebuilding. The central business district and the tourist areas will probably be fully protected and rebuilt. There will be housing for oil industry and port workers, but probably not in the low-lying areas. But when rebuilding is over, the population of New Orleans will be much smaller than it is now.
A similar hurricane, in 1900, flattened Galveston, TX. A hurricane with 120 MPH winds killed 6000 people and levelled much of the town. The entire town, 500 city blocks, had to be jacked up several feet, and a huge seawall built. The jacking and filling job took eight years. Building the seawall took from 1900 to 1962. Sixty two years. And Galveston wasn't below sea level.
Ever after, Galveston was a smaller and less important city than it was before the 1900 hurricane.
New Orleans is built on delta silt, notoriously unstable and has been documented for decades to be slowly sinking, eventually turning into Venice of the Gulf. For decades the artifically channeled river continues to silt up, raising the water level ever higher, faster than dredging or levy improvements can check.
shh... don't tell holland that it is impossible to live safely on delta silt. They'd have to move their whole country and give up their elaborate system that supposedly protects them from storms.
Oh and by the way, the levees in New Orleans didn't fail. What failed where flood walls. You see the storm surge was higher than the flood walls, and it began to flow over the top of them. This flow ended up washing out the foundation of the flood walls and they collapsed.
Although the worst part of Katrina's storm surge didn't hit New Orleans (It was 30 feet in Mississippi, the highest ever recorded... higher than the Tsunami), but what did hit was higher than the system could cope with.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
There is a lot of talk and headscratching about the ferocity of nature, etc., but I would like to point out that much a lot of the deaths of New Orleans (and the tsunami as well) are caused by failure of society as well.
In both cases you have a lot of poor people living close by the coast and the governments that do not really care what happens to them.
If Katrina hit Amsterdam, for example, it would still be a disaster but not nearly as bad as NEw Orleans was. Thats because Amsterdam is the biggest city in Holland, and they spent the necessary money to protect themselves and take care of their environment, they make sure they are surrounded by farmland that can soak up flood waters very quickly.
However, it is obvious that New Orleans' levys were a low priority and all kinds of construction projects were being approved which destroyed the wetlands around the city. But what is most amazing is that there was no evacuation plan, there was no emergency response from the state or the federal government for several days after the disaster hit. The only way people could leave was if they had their own cars and money for gas, and the poor did not so they were stuck.
And bush sent the Guard in only four days after the disaster hit and then he sent them "to prevent looting" and not to help the thousands of people that were stuck in the flooded city. The governer could not send the LA Guard in because they are in Iraq.
Now there is a huge debate about whether these huricanes are caused by global warming. But even if we stop activities that contribute to global warming, there would still be natural disasters. That cannot be helped.
But what we can do is organise our society so we are able to prevent damage as much as possible and quickly help the victims if disaster strikes. That was obviously not done in this case.
Actually, the more the population grows, the more people will be in harm's way. That is, unless we (whoever "we" is) start taking into account the relative safety of various possible places to live.
How many times does the media report that the Global demand for grain has outstripped supply five years running
That sentence makes little or no sense. Unless of course governments are artificially reducing the price, in which case of course that will happen. The good news is that it's easily fixed: the governments involved just need to stop using price controls.
It seems kind of strange to me because the US artificially increases the price of grain.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I was watching a rerun on Friday(?) night on the Discover Channel. The documentary, updated that day for Katrina, was not new, and was a complete rundown of what would happen if a Cat 5 hit NOLA.
But they mentioned the other city in the crosshairs. New York City. It's in the elbow of two long pieces of land, both aimed at the Atlantic ocean.
If a hurricane comes up the water, which it will, NYC is going under as surely as New Orleans did. It's only a matter of time.
Will we move NYC?
Here's a video of a concrete house that's been through two hurricanes without a scratch. You can see blown out screens on the porch but the houses came out fine. This is actually the company headquarters of the company that makes the concrete dome kits in Florida (www.aidomes.com).
Concrete Dome
Both types of homes are cheap to build, will withstand far more wind than traditional bricks and sticks construction and are more energy efficient.
What else do both of those type homes have in common? It's very difficult to get them financed. You can't go through a traditional mortgage because Fannie Mae won't touch the loans, which means you have to get a portfolio loan like we did which is prime plus. Then you get to fight with the insurance company for coverage. Our house won't burn or get blown down, but the original quote was higher than for a conventional house!
As long as we have a such a backward attitude toward home construction and financing more survivable housing structures, then you can expect a lot of flying lumber every time a hurricane lands somewhere. We build the same type homes in danger areas, then act surprised when they don't survive.
True a concrete home will flood just like conventional construction but at least the shell will be in good condition. Rip out the insides, sand blast it clean, rebuild the interior. If you build it right you can even replace the HVAC ducts and wiring conduit to prevent mold growth. It'll be just like new.
These days you can actually watch the lumber in conventional homes get thinner by the day but we're just so stuck in that brick box with a tar paper roof mentality.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Imagine the insurance claims when a 2km asteroid plows into the Pacific. That 2004 was so costly in insurance claims is all the more reason to promote space industrial development. Hurricane Katrina is equivalent to ~100m asteroid, this is a localized disaster. Imagine this kind of damage on a national or planetary scale provided by a several km impactor.
As more people live in more coastal cities, resources from space (beamed power, comm, transport, eventually food and plastics) will provide fast response and rebuilding after disasters. Imagine the new power grid consisting of wire grids spread over an area taking microwaves from orbit. Or getting space-dropped shipments of grain anywhere on Earth.
Vernor Vinge's books feature a deep future where Earth has been repopulated several times after biosphere-destroying disasters. Carl Sagan said that the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program. We need to work toward becoming a multiplanet species and to create industry in freefall.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This was 40 years ago. I wager it had very little to do with Iraq, especially since none of the funds that had been requested for levee work were for the sections of the levees that actually broke.
Nice try, though.
They've been begging for federal funds for years before this happened to upgrade the levees.
An eye-witness to the storm, whose home was near one of the breached levees, reported on CNN Saturday that the break was caused by loose barges smashing into the levee, and not a failure of the levee alone.
So, it may be that no amount of federal funding might have had any preventative effect.
Proverbs 21:19
I've had about $265 in donations. I don't need anymore. That will be plenty to keep my kids fed until we can get more help.
Assholes like Rick and Roll can easily go to my website and see that I'm not a crook... just a guy trying to make ends meet and raise a family. I got the help I needed... wasn't looking to raise a million bucks when others need help too.
As far as asking my extended family... they are in as much need of help as I am right now... so, that won't work.
Just remember one thing about giving money to Red Cross... a lot of the money the collected under the guise of assiting the victims of 9/11 never got anywhere near those people... it went to countries overseas.
And, all you cock-suckers who think America and the South "deserved what they got"... you just wait... your time is coming. Natural Disasters don't do politics. Only a complete moron would see this as retribution over Iraq or whatever. I thought you Slashdotters were smarter than that.
I guess not.
Personally, I don't live my life thinking everybody is out to get one over on me. But, that's what it is to live in the South. If you think the world is shit and everyone is evil, then that is all you will ever see.
All men aren't pigs... we just smell that way.
The key difference between Iraq and New Orleans is that Iraq is a national problem. It is another country, and individal states are not authorized to "deal" or make war with other countries. Thus, it is the responsibility of the federal government to deal with Iraq. Regardless of whether you believe we should be there or not, it's a situation that has to be dealt with and paid for on a federal level.
New Orleans, however, is but a small city within a state. They had a responsibility, as a city, to do everything in their power to protect themselves from predictable natural disasters. They should have done this with their own money, not with money from the Federal government. The local tax rates should have been much higher in New Orlearns (and should be much higher in all coastal areas) so that the goverment could provide adequate protection for the people.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
So, humanity has settled all the really good land, and cheaper land is being settled by the poor as global population increases.
If a city's population increases 10% in 5 years, as people move off the land to seek jobs, the poor are going to buy the cheap land that noone else wants to buy - because when you've got nothing to begin with, having a job and a house is just brilliant, even if you're living below water level.
If there's been no inundation for 100 years, then it's never going to happen - right? And when you've got thousands of people who started with nothing and have built up their entire lives on that false belief, you end up with shock and disbelief and a deep-felt sense of betrayal.
You just lost EVERYTHING because of government inaction? No - you just bought the demo.
Why do these catastrophes affect the poor? Because they've put their entire lives into the opportunities that come from living near a population centre. They can afford to take the risk on marginal land, because it is better than having nothing at all - better than no hope at all. When the wind/wave/flood comes, they're back where they started.
Of course they're bitter.
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
I disagree that the ACE "did their job well." Several articles -- Google gives me this one and this one -- are pointing out that the construction of the levees directly caused wetland loss, which made New Orleans more vulnerable to big storms. So if the ACE's job was to build levees, then I guess they did good. But if their job was to protect New Orleans, I'd say they did more harm than good.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
While I think the parent certainly could have stated things a bit more effectively, s/h/it raises an entirely valid point -- people need to take some responsibility for themselves, and stop having kids as a form of recreational activity.
Sex is fine -- wonderful even. Having 6 to 12 kids is most certainly not, especially when you're too poor to pay for their existance and instead rely on the system to do so for you. This isn't just an American problem, and it isn't a racial problem either. It's mostly a problem with the poor, who are having entirely too many children, whether they are American, African, Russian, Asian, or otherwise.
Family is important -- don't get me wrong. But "spamming the world with rough copies of oneself" is decidedly not. Too many people lead to an increased cost of living, increased loss of life when a disaster (natural or otherwise) strikes in a place where people tend to gather (cities), and most importantly, a poorer quality of life as resources begin run low, a problem which snowballs itself out of control.
I'm not saying that the governments should keep their peoples from having children (necessarily -- though I think that allotting each person, say, two children, regardless of partner or longevity of each child, might not be a bad idea), but rather giving up on the whole anti-birth-control bit and, most importantly, destroying the taboo and discomfort associated with acquiring and using all forms of birth control..
Ack!
There are plenty of links that describe the NFIP subsidy mostly based on money owed to the Treasury and debts that have been forgiven so that they never need to be paid back, but the reality can be summed up in a single quote:
"...if NFIP charges actuarial rates, the program is superfluous."
In other words, if the NFIP were able to recover it's liabilities plus adminitration costs from the premiums paid by the people who need the coverage then a private insurance company would be more than willing to provide that service. Private insurance companies are unwilling to provide a free market alternative.
That quote was from CATO but please don't write me off as a free market trumps common sense wing nut. I just think that welfare should go to people who need it not millionaires building McMansions on sand dunes (or 10 feet under the sea level).
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Great, the "Everything bad is Clinton's fault, everything good is Bush's work" line of argument.
Explain to me again how Clinton is responsible for organizing a huge bureaucratic organization costing billions, whose purpose is to provide "Homeland Security" completely failed in its first time at bat?
While you are at it, explain how it is Clinton's fault for the deficit, the Iraq war, 9/11, Global warming, the hurricane and the tsunami. I am sure you have already worked up a rational explanation for how everything is Clinton's fault!
Lets use your example a little futher. Why didn't Reagan and Bush Sr. do anything about these levees? They had 12 years before Clinton to solve the problem!