#38492: ekzept — 09/02  at  02:23 PM
love that phrase from the link, strategizing with.

#38494: ekzept — 09/02  at  02:24 PM

indeed, some talk by economists says insurance premiums are the taxes i was referring to above, and are politically acceptable to the ruling party.

should have added that same economists don't like the idea of insurance going away, because that breaks the information flow from the future to now.

#38508: Raven — 09/02  at  04:33 PM

Change the argument to "it was a FLOODWALL, not a LEVEE", as if that makes any difference at all.

When Harry's mewling once again about his daughter-in-law's having escaped a terrorist attack, I wonder if he gets all hung up on semantics then.

Actually, no, I don't, not really.

But let hundreds, possibly thousands, of poor, non-white people actually die, as opposed to potentially doing so, and Harry instantly zooms in on what's really important.

You never disappoint, Harry.

#38516: — 09/02  at  05:51 PM
Levees do fail, sometimes. They did in 1927, in several places up and down the Mississippi, and in that case New Orleans was saved by deliberately breaking a levee to flood out a county to the west. But they didn't fail this time.

The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated. It was not designed for the maximum potential impact. Nothing is, with the single exception of the casks used to transport nuclear waste.

Your community, if you look around, will also provide examples of potential disasters that have not been fully mitigated. Yet instead of demanding that your taxes be raised to idiotproof Flatgrass County in [YOUR STATE HERE], you mewl how it all should be used on schools.

The World Trade Centers collapsed, killing thousands, because, although they were designed to be hit by airplanes, they were not also designed to withstand a fire fueled by 10,000 gallons of kerosene.

Have all of you demanded retrofitting every highrise in your communities? After all, you've been warned.

And yet you sit on your hands and just trust to luck.

There are many things to complain of -- and many of them could have been forecast -- about the New Orleans disaster. But screaming BUSH DID IT! does not impress me as a reasoned analysis of risk management.

#38520: Chris Clarke — 09/02  at  06:06 PM
The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated.

You don't know what you're talking about. The precise stretch that gave way had been identified as in need of repair by more than one agency.

It was not designed for the maximum potential impact.

And it didn't get one. It got the impact it was designed for: a surge from an indirect hit by a class three storm.

How the hell do you stay employed as a journalist with your inane approach to fact? Oh, I forgot. You're a business reporter. Never mind.

Next up: Harry tells us how Muslims started the hurricane, and Asians spurred the looting with their disregard for life.

#38522: ekzept — 09/02  at  06:34 PM
well, Harry, there are well-documented cutbacks in spending for flood control around New Orleans during BushCo's administration. sure, the problem has been neglected for a long time, they should have had a way of withstanding a Category 5, but they didn't.

with BushCo, people know all too well how anti-science and anti-environment their policies are. while there are nutcases and nutty positions on the environment side, making wetlands more robust and adapting to consequences of global warming aren't among them. yet both those issues are things BushCo and his Party have fought.

then there is the tepid response after the hurricane. given the fragile nature of the floods protection system, which you admit, the seiche in Ponchatrain should have been monitored, as should the floodwalls and so on. hose are, after all, a project of the Army Corps of Engineers. given the evacuation the Nagin ordered prior to the hurricane, it did not take much to anticipate the costs of those controls failing.

what is disturbing to me is that the New Orleans flood controls system was identified and reported on in autumn of 2001 as one of the easiest targets for terrorists to destroy in order to wreak maximum havoc on a metro area. if nothing else, that system should have been made more robust simply for that reason. if they had a major project underway and got caught with it incomplete, i could understand and excuse it. that would just be bad luck.

but here we have a government that seems to continue to say "Shit happens. We'll come to your aid after it does, but don't expect us to do anything to prevent it." or "It's a state and local problem. We'll come to help if asked." i think this failure, if it is not recognized or acted upon, is ultimately a failure of our particular form of representative democracy, much more than simply a failure of a particular administration. BushCo is bad, but he was elected and the responsibility ultimately belongs to the people.

the people who claim national defense is the first and most important responsibility of government surely cannot claim protection and aid during disasters doesn't belong there, too, at least not and be consistent.

#38524: Raven — 09/02  at  06:55 PM

The floodwall did NOT deteriorate because of neglect by the Bush administration. It was not deteriorated.

So you say. The US Army Corps of Engineers says the opposite:

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

...

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for.

...

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

Given a choice between USACE's word on structural requirements, and that of Harry the Hack, I know whose are backed up with facts.

(never mind Chris' question about staying employed as a journalist, how do you get even a business reporter beat with that level of financial innumeracy, plus the inability to do a news database search?)

#38529: ekzept — 09/02  at  07:43 PM
the head of the Army Corps of Engineers was just on Larry King on CNN repeating the assertion that the flooding in New Orleans was anticipated, in answer to the question, essentially, about whether or not Bush was right when he stated it could not be anticipated.

this selective suppression of scientific and engineering assessments seems to be a tactic the Republicans use a lot, even if they come from government. dunno, maybe the Democrats do it, too. anyway, that letter just appeared on the AAAS ScienceNOW site.

#38532: Robert Bourdeau — 09/02  at  08:21 PM
A pedantic question. How can you determine that this SciAm article is from October 2001? The SciAm site has a date of 8/31/2005. If this is really from 10/2001 then SciAm needs to improve how the archives can provide citation summaries. I read through the whole article, excellent as it is, but saw no publication date. Perhaps I have to have access to the actual archive and not this print-version of the article?

#38535: ekzept — 09/02  at  09:29 PM
don't know where you're lookin', Robert, but the page i see is clearly marked "October 2001". besides, i read the article in the original, and it was echoed by the New York Times the same year, although their emphasis after 11th September was upon the floods controls system as a terrorist target.

#38536: ekzept — 09/02  at  09:42 PM
speaking of insurance, we're beginning to get some numbers on the losses from Katrina on the Gulf. there are also some numbers on the loss from Katrina. oh, incidently, that first number is $100 billion.

also, former head of Army Corps of Engineers in charge of New Orleans flood control project a few years back, and who, i just learned, resigned when the funds were cut, was interviewed on Aaron Brown's NewsNight. he is Michael Parker. great piece. spoke a lot about how this stuff does and doesn't get funded in Washington and why. spoke about Office of Management and Budget (OMB). don't think he got enough time.

#38537: ekzept — 09/02  at  09:52 PM
documentation regarding Mr Parker's resignation is available.

#38538: ekzept — 09/02  at  09:57 PM
here we go, from that last link, dated March 2002:

President Bush and the White House Office of Management and Budget have said they are vehemently opposed to such efforts, particularly in light of what they say are the heightened spending needs for homeland security and the overseas war efforts.

#38541: ekzept — 09/02  at  10:58 PM
the Financial Times Washington correspondent, Edward Alden, has a surprisingly negative op-ed piece on Bush's relationship to the Gulf Coast tragedy which I have printed as three GIF files, available in 3 parts: page one, page two, and page three.

#38542: PZ Myers — 09/02  at  11:10 PM
You can also verify the publication date of the SciAm article on PubMed.

#38544: ekzept — 09/02  at  11:17 PM
the Grey Lady reports:

As it is, criticism of Mr Bush has been unsparing, especially abroad. European newspaper headlines used words like "anarchy" and "apocalypse" and some ordinary citizens in less fortunate parts of the world spoke with virtual contempt for what they saw as an American failure to live up to its professed ideals.

it's more than noise: the differential between a broadbased international stock index fund and an S&P 500 index fund more than doubled since Monday with the international fund leading. gold is up, too.

#38545: — 09/03  at  12:04 AM
PZ, you have a very interesting and informative web site. Your clear science writing is second to none. I can't believe you also suffer from BDS. I'm sure with patience and encouragement you can get over it.

#38546: — 09/03  at  12:14 AM
Are you sure you guys are scientists?

First, we have Chris committing the Numerical Fallacy.

The wall was not designed to a category but to a head of water.

The water overtopped the wall. Whether the wall was deteriorated or not, it did not fail. The overflow washed away its foundations, and the (still intact) wall collapsed.

I blame Bush for stealing all the good Democratic dirt under the wall and selling it at giveaway prices to a clique headed by James Watt and Arabian sheikhs.

Then ekzept says the govt. should have been prepared for a Category 5, presumably by raising higher walls. That could have been done, but it would still have made a bad bet that you would never have a failure.

It would have made more engineering and risk management sense to have used the same resources (if available) to compartment the city, although no doubt such inconvenience would never have been tolerated.

Consider a not unlikely event in a Category 5 storm: a grain ship with a mass of 50,000 tons is driven at 4 mph against the flood barrier. No wall man can devise would have held up against that, though maybe an enormously broad levee (of which examples exist, farther upriver)might have.

But there were walls instead of levees there for a reason.

Now, moving away from science a bit, Raven faults Bush for not fully funding Corps requests. What planet do you vote on, Raven?

No government fully funds engineering requests. I could look up reports going back at least 30 years demonstrating more deterioration in our bridges than in those floodwalls, and those haven't been fully funded. Guess the cost. $10 trillion wouldn't be too much.

Funny, I don't recall that when Clinton announced the coming surplus, his also saying, 'Muh fullah Mericans, we must spend every penny of this surplus fixing our scandalously deteriorated bridges.'

Government doesn't work like that.

I am not an admirer of Bush policy, nor of management in New Orleans. But the idea that this would not have happened had Al Gore kept us out of war in Iraq is just silly.

#38548: — 09/03  at  12:35 AM
I did not understand which international fund is leading, ekzept, but I can confirm that there is some talk if the New Orleans flood will bring down the dollar or the Nasdaq.

I heard that yesterday, but as an engineer I dont see a 50 meter levee failure a big deal, and inundations are everywhere, this year in Europe, in Asia, in Prague last year. In August I visited Bulgaria and half of the railroad system was out of order because of the floods. The physical damage must be minimal and the water will be pumped out in a few days.

But what the world saw is the chaos, the lack of preparedness, the hordes of helpless people. I suggest after you finish with apportioning the blame (and ritually beheading the river god as used to be done in the Hwang Ho floods in imperial China) pls reinforce disaster response. I need a strong Nasdaq, so ¡MANOS A LA OBRA!

#38549: — 09/03  at  12:42 AM
PS: What is meant to say is that the New Orleans flood is no big deal but the fact that it generates talk about bringing down the dollar or the Nasdaq worries me. It is a bad sign. People smell chaos, incompetence.

#38552: Jason — 09/03  at  04:23 AM
The Army Corps of Engineers has this to say in http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050901corps,1,7189346.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.

In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way—inundating much of the city—were completed and in good condition before the hurricane.

However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn’t handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis.

“I don’t see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. “Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place.”

Strock also denied that escalating costs from the war in Iraq contributed to reductions in funding for hurricane projects in Louisiana, as some critics have suggested. Records show that corps funding for the Louisiana projects has generally decreased in recent years.

Mostly what has been cut for these various projects have been studies, it seems, and I don't know of any study that ever prevented a flood.

Folks, its way too early to fling about blame and point fingers. There will be blame for everyone, left and right, after the city is pumped out and rebuilding begins.The media is going to print a considerable amount of misleading and conflicting information, be skeptical of all of it, not just the bits that conflict with your political persuasion.

#38554: Raven — 09/03  at  06:18 AM

What planet do you vote on, Raven?

Planet Balance Sheet, where spending $5.6 billion a month in Iraq means it's not available for spending somewhere else. Only in Republican fantasies do those kinds of fiscal actions have no consequences.

No government fully funds engineering requests.

Nice try at shifting the framing from "slashing" to "not fully funding", Harry. But we're talking about unprecedented major cuts here in commitments, not just projected failure to beat COLA. It's sloppy business reporting to conflate a lower rate of growth or a neutral rate with a declining rate, Harry.

#38555: Raven — 09/03  at  06:33 AM

George W. Bush, September 2005:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

George clearly doesn't read National Geographic, either (from October 2004).

#38565: ekzept — 09/03  at  09:21 AM
Jason writes:

Folks, its way too early to fling about blame and point fingers. There will be blame for everyone, left and right, after the city is pumped out and rebuilding begins.The media is going to print a considerable amount of misleading and conflicting information, be skeptical of all of it, not just the bits that conflict with your political persuasion.

no, it's not. the civil and political leaders may be busy but, as for us, after we've contributed the cash, i think second-guessing and evaluating the performance of our political leaders are the most important jobs we have to do. further, Jason quotes the Chicago Tribune:

“I don’t see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. “Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place.”

Strock is one voice and assesses the narrow. the failure, however, is massively political and is clearly the responsibility of both political parties. the failure is the failure to plan and act long term. Mr Bush is and has been President for five years. the Republicans control Congress. it's their watch. who else should we complain to?

Harry Eagar complains about fallacies in argument here. but by saying "Government doesn't work that way", he commits a fallacy of relevance. the problem is what needs to be done to prevent this kind of tragedy. most bridges are not in coastal areas and are not directly affected by these kinds of storms and by the increasingly severe weather which warming will bring. it hasn't even been raised as an issue yet, but that same warming will raise sea levels so make the challenge higher. seiches from even modest storms will eventually top whatever height they raise flood walls.

we are focussed upon New Orleans now. the same sea level rises will eventually challenge downtown New York City, the Florida keys, Cape Cod, and any other coast. worse, evidence is, these rises won't be gradual, there will be spurts and jumps.

Mr Bush expresses confidence that we are so big and so rich we can "take care of both", when asked about the Iraq adventure and storm recovery. Harry Eagar says we can't. i say we'd better, not only because of the direct effects upon these coastal areas, but because the economic consequences will be large.

#38566: Chris Clarke — 09/03  at  09:25 AM

The wall was not designed to a category but to a head of water.

A head of water expected as a result of...
come on, Harry, even you can get this one...

The water overtopped the wall. Whether the wall was deteriorated or not, it did not fail. The overflow washed away its foundations, and the (still intact) wall collapsed.

Let's skip the forensics, guys. Harry's just saved the country some money by pulllng an engineer's report out of his ass from way out in Maui.

Consider a not unlikely event in a Category 5 storm: a grain ship with a mass of 50,000 tons is driven at 4 mph against the flood barrier.

Consider a not unlikely interpretation: a raving bullshit artist, called on his games by the people he despises, tries to emit a cloud of squid ink to cover his sorry ass.

You might look to Jason's post, Harry, for an example of intelligent, informed rebuttal to points like the ones we've been making. Jason raises some good points. I'll confess to skepticism of comments made in defense of the Bush administration by people in the chain of command. But there's a lot here to be sorted out. And Jason's last point is a good one in any event.