On Katrina
by Jason Godesky“Katrina’s landfall on August 29, 2005 may well be remembered as the beginning of the collapse of the American Empire. It could also be remembered by future generations as the day that Mother Earth declared full-scale war on the human race.” That’s what Michael Ruppert at “From the Wilderness” wrote in the hours before Katrina’s landfall, presaging the various spins that would be put on the massive tragedy unfolding along the Gulf Coast. Some blamed the wrath of an angry god, but most of the furor has come from John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s radical proposition that massive climate change might have an effect on the weather. Tech Central Station’s James K. Glassman wrote a piece decrying this kind of “exploitation” of Katrina by “environmental extremists.” As I write this, 80% of New Orleans has been reclaimed by the ocean. It will be some time before we know how many people have died. It will be some time before we know the full impact of what this storm has wrought, but there are some things we know already.
I will start by mentioning what the critics got right. To use Katrina as a rallying point for the Kyoto Protocol is indefensible. The Kyoto Protocol is ingenious in its promotion of environmentalism and international equality simultaneously, but the concessions made to convince industrialized nations like the United States to sign on made it of minimal effectivness for its stated goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions–and then the industrialized nations like the United States refused to sign it anyway!
But to deny the role of global warming in this is ludicrous. While they’re certainly correct that terrible storms have happened in the past without an anthropogenic role, it’s an entirely irrelevant point. Almost a year ago exactly, Michael wrote a piece on this very blog titled, “Warm My Globe,” about Hurricane Ivan–a storm similar to Katrina in many respects–and how we could expect more storms of even greater intensity (like Katrina….) in the future if we continued warming the planet. Scientists studying global climate change have warned, clearly and consistently, for years, that more hurricanes and more powerful hurricanes are the inevitable result of global warming.
Yes, Katrina could have happened even without global warming, but the chances increase the more we warm the globe, until the probability of something like we’re seeing goes from infintisimal to inevitable. When our prediction is that such storms will occur with greater intensity and frequency, and then we see such storms occur with greater intensity and frequency, it is illogical to counter that storms of similar intensity happened in the past with lower frequency. The counter-arguments being proffered up here not only lack evidence, they don’t even work logically.
There is some debate on global warming, the critics are right about that. They debate where the effects will land on the scale from “catastrophic” to “apocalyptic,” and they debate whether the human factor ranges from all of it, to almost all of it. That’s the scientific debate; those are the issues on which scientists are honestly still divided. The globe is warming, and it’s mostly because of human behavior. Those are the known and accepted facts. On these two points, there is no honest disagreement–only disingenuous political posturing on behalf of monied interests. Politicians and think tanks exploit those disagreements that remain and the public’s general ignorance of science and how it is done to obfuscate the facts, confuse the issue, and make it all seem much less clear-cut than it really is. While scientists are trying desperately to educate the public, conservative think tanks are trying desperately to confuse the public. The headline ends up reading, “Shape of Earth: Views Differ.”
This symptom of global warming is being heralded as the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history. The Canadian Press is running a story that starts off with:
Army engineers trying to plug New Orleans’ breached levees struggled to move giant sandbags and concrete barriers into place, and the governor said Wednesday the situation was growing more desperate, leaving no choice but to abandon the flooded city.
Because of Hurricane Katrina, the option of abandoning the twenty-fourth largest city in the United States is now on the table. This is a momentous step, showing just how desperate the situation is. Whether we try to rebuild a shattered city, or simply find homes for an entire city of homeless, this is the kind of economic shock that destroys empires as surely as Rome’s barbarians, or the Mayans’ droughts.
Yet the horrific loss of life, and the possible loss of one of our greatest cities–though they are the very things that move us and pull on our heart-strings–are not the most important losses here. Katrina’s worst damage may have been to something far less sentimental: our petroleum infrastructure. As the Oil Drum explained:
You see, with supply and demand balanced on a knife’s edge as it is because of “peak oil,” this scenario could lead to huge amounts of volatilty in the oil markets for weeks to come. There is simply no more extra oil (except maybe the SPR, but that petroleum is problematic as it is yet to be refined, and refineries are already at capacity if they survived the storm, Chuck Schumer, you idiot.) we can call upon to put into the system.
With supply and demand balanced as it is (and with demand only growing over time from places like China and India), it only takes one “something” (terror, weather, malevolent world politician) to disrupt this gently balanced system.
This is what Goldman Sachs was saying six months ago when they introduced the idea of a $105/bbl superspike. NB, I am not saying this is the “superspike.” However, if this is an event that really disrupts supply it could mean a terribly volatile market with a price spike…(and yes, that $105/bbl number probably equals somewhere around $4/gal or more for gas or even worse, a shortage of supply because of systemic problems).
Jeff Vail pointed to this article (cached by Google) when he called Port Fourchon and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port “the jugular of U.S. oil production and importation.” (see this PDF map of oil infrastructure in the area) Not only is this where all of our Gulf oil is extracted (providing some 25% of the oil we use in the United States), it is also where our foreign imports come for processing, refinement and distribution.
I must admit, I was in the midst of writing an article on Katrina’s effect on Peak Oil on Tuesday, but I was allayed by the news reports that damage was minimal. I suspected I was being lied to, in order to calm fears, and it seems my instincts were true. Pipes buried beneath the Gulf coast have, after years of exposure to the Gulf from erosion due to the failed levees, begun to leak, causing terrible oil spills even before Katrina. We have yet to assess how much the hurricane has furthered this process. The Oil Drum is reporting that some 20 rigs have been lost.
In short, the Gulf area hit by the storm is basically in about the same shape as Biloxi. The damage numbers you have gotten from the government and analysts are, in my opinion, much too low. We are looking at YEARS to return to the production levels we had prior to the storm. The eastern Gulf of Mexico is primarily oil production…
Once upon a time, estimes of when we would reach the global Hubbert’s Peak hovered around 2015. Then the deceits of Shell and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were revealed, grossly overstating the size of their holdings–bringing estimates down to this year, 2005. Rumors persist that the Ghawar super-field has peaked. Oil prices have been blamed on usual summer demand, but the truth of the matter is that we are no longer capable of raising supply to meet increasing demand.
It may be time to stop speaking of Peak Oil as a future possibility, and begin speaking of it as a present reality.
If this is the case, then Katrina may be the beginning of the end for civilization itself. Collapses are systemic, but the “final straws” that sets them off are largely random. Rome and the Mayans were weakened by the marginal returns on their strategy of increasing complexity, leaving them vulnerable to crises that they could have easily managed in the past. The effect of Katrina remains to be seen, but it can span from the immediately devastating, to the final blow.
Even if it has no such dramatic effect, it clearly showcases the nature of the problem we face. Katrina is a product of global warming, but it may have its most far-reaching effects on the issue of Peak Oil. Civilization faces a number of such crises, which we tend to study in isolation from one another. Yet any one of them could spell the end of civilization. A solution to one or the other is, thus, meaningless. Our problems do not exist in isolation from one another–they feed on each other, and accelerate one another. In truth, there is only one crisis we face–a terribly complex crisis with many facets.
It is the crisis of too much complexity.
Much of my reasoning, particularly in the last paragraphs, is predicated on Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies. I’ll be posting a review of that in the next day or so, including a summary of his argument. Also see Steve’s entry on Katrina, published earlier today.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 1 September 2005 @ 3:15 PM
Here’s how the system works. We take the oil from the Middle East, ship it to the U.S. to be refined, and use it to grow wheat. We then ship the wheat to, well, most of the world–particularly China and the Middle East.
Two problems now:
1.) We import the oil from the Middle East primarily to the area of New Orleans, where refineries along the Gulf coast refine and process it. Those are … well, you read the article.
2.) The wheat that we ship to the rest of the world is mostly grown in the Great Plains. For cost reasons, we usually ship it down the Mississippi rather than drive trucks. The wheat is then loaded onto larger cargo ships bound for their destinations in the Third World at the Mississippi delta–in New Orleans.
And there was already a slight grain shortage…
Comment by Jason Godesky — 1 September 2005 @ 5:10 PM
Real Climate has an excellent piece up, “ Hurricanes and Global Warming - Is There a Connection?”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 September 2005 @ 11:21 AM
Every once in a great while, Christians impress me.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 September 2005 @ 11:53 AM
Ahhhhh, shit …. exactly what I feared…..
Pipeline damage and a big, nasty oil spill….
Also on the Oil Drum.
In other news, the number of lost rigs is now up to 30. There are about 700 rigs in total, last I heard, so that’s about 4%. Worse, the Oil Drum is now talking about missing platforms.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 September 2005 @ 2:56 PM
“There is something egregiously obscene about the people in charge of the U.S. government telling citizens to donate money for a hurricane relief effort while the administration, from the president on down, has viciously abdicated its most basic responsibilities.
For the activities it views as really important, like the war on Iraq, the Bush White House hardly requires private contributions while siphoning off vast quantities of taxpayer funds. But when the task is to save lives instead of destroying them, kids are supposed to bust open their piggy banks.”
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=8638
==========================
“I am starting to doubt reports that shots were fired at New Orleans rescuers.
Maybe gunshots were heard by the rescuers - there have been 2 reported shootings involving law enforcement and looters but no recorded attacks on rescuers - but is it a convenient excuse to hide their lack of ability to rescue the people there? Shooting is preventing rescue efforts for all of the city?
Why do I think this? I know the info-marketing game. Sean Hannity is closely linked to Karl Rove’s office. He gets talking points from that office daily if not hourly.
All Hannity did on his radio and television show today was discuss how looters were halting rescue efforts because police and National Guard units were being diverted to stop the lootings.
Hannity would do all he could to divert the discussion to this “talking point” when the issue came up that there was no rescue effort visible.
That is how the Bushies are going to spin why there was no initial rescue effort - the looters were shooting at the rescuers - to hide their lack or resources and competence. ”
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=293930220
or http://tinyurl.com/9oajs
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I do hope the decent people of America realise what’s happening to their country ( and by extension, to the rest of us) and throw this bunch of thugs out. (It would be nice to tar and feather them, but that would just be vengeful fun, not justice).
================================
Earlier today, I looked at Yahoo News, which comes up on my Yahoo! homepage, and got the following headlines:
Reuters: Top Stories
Hurricane Katrina relief efforts unacceptable-Bush - 39 minutes ago - OK
World stunned as U.S. struggles with Katrina - 26 minutes ago - Withdrawn
Troops, supplies head for stranded New Orleans - one hour ago - OK
Lost gas output 10 pct of daily use-Govt - one hour ago - Withdrawn
Europe to send oil aid to U.S. - 21 minutes ago - Withdrawn
The ‘withdrawn’ stories are ones you in America may never hear. The media organisations are doing their stuff.
==================
This one: “World stunned as U.S. struggles with Katrina ” only appeared as an item in the Khaleej Times - a small town newspaper in Dubai, copied from the AFP teletype:
World’s press stunned at hurricane-humbled US
(AFP)
2 September 2005
PARIS - The world’s press reacted with disbelief on Friday to mayhem overrunning the hurricane disaster zone in the United States, describing the chaos as reminiscent of a Third World crisis and as a humiliating episode for the superpower.
“Here is a superpower that can crush at will a tinpot dictatorship but then becomes so bogged down in the grisly aftermath of war that it finds itself unable to respond to anything like adequately to the plight of tens of thousands of its own citizens engulfed by a natural calamity,� said Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.
“President Bush, his ratings already in free-fall, could pay a high price indeed for his military folly,� it said.
Gun-toting looters pillaging stores in the streets, bodies floating in the waters, levees unable to hold back the water, and tales of rape and squalor in the main emergency refuge, the New Orleans Superdome, left foreign commentators stunned.
“Young men have not only been looting with impunity but firing on National Guardsmen. And the authorities still have no idea how many people may have died,� London’s conservative Daily Telegraph said.
“In Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama over the past four days, the United States has been struggling to provide the basic necessities of life - food, water and medicine - to the victims of Hurricane Katrina,� London’s Daily Telegraph said. “Take New Orleans alone. The breached levees remain unrepaired. About 20,000 refugees have been living in appalling squalor in the Superdome sports stadium.�
France’s Figaro newspaper headlined: “America overwhelmed by catastrophe.�
The left-wing Liberation recalled how the Kobe earthquake had humbled a major power.
“But the lesson of New Orleans is even darker,� it said.
“A modern city that sinks under the waters and into anarchy is a cruel spectacle for an absolute champion of security like (US President George W.) Bush, who incidentally seems out of his depth,� it said.
An apparent lack of preparation for the crisis staggered many papers.
“What really stands out is the clear insufficient investment and contingency measures to protect the population of the Mississippi Delta from a forecast disaster,� the paper said.
In Portugal the right-leaning daily Diario de Noticias likened the images of the crisis to a disaster movie or “Liberia or some another Third World nation in trouble.�
“It is surprising that the mechanisms of civil protection, especially in such a high-risk zone, are non-existant and so flagrantly inefficient,� it wrote in an editorial.
In the United States, newspapers asked the same questions.
“How could the government have been so unready for a crisis that was so widely predicted?� asked The Washington Post, adding that experts had “issued repeated warnings for years about the city’s unique topography and vulnerability.�
“The sluggish, inicial response … has embittered and inflamed tens of thousands of people awaiting relief, most of them poor and black and many of them old and sick,â€? said the Post editorial.
Papers highlighted the gap between rich and poor unmasked by the looting and the fact that the most impoverished took the brunt of the disaster.
“If there existed any doubt that in the world’s richest country there exist as much social injustice, inequality and poverty as in the Third World these doubts … have been swept away by the dark and oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico,â€? said the Barcelona-based El Periodico.
Not only are you being effed-up by your government, but they’re doing their very best to stop you hearing about it.
Have a good Labor Day weekend (we had ours six months ago - on May 1st - same time as those terrifying, but very incompetent and probably drunk ‘Red’ Russians)
regards
Richard
PS I think Steve’s post is just about on the nail - even if he does sound a little bit over-apocalyptic.
Don’t worry - wait until Monday.
Comment by richard01 — 2 September 2005 @ 10:35 PM
I would invite you all to come and share ‘primitive life’ on a paradise island - white sand beaches, waving coconut palms, clear unpolluted sea, fruit on every other tree, cigarettes at 50c a pack, beer at 30c a bottle, and tuna at 80c a kilo (coconuts and bananas more or less free), beautiful women, (see: http://www.coconutstudio.com/Siagao%20Diet.htm), and much else.
You could rent a house for $20 a month (with garden, electricity, fresh potable water, etc - nice outlook - but no aircon, no broadband, no TV, no newspapers, not many delis, and you have to eat Beboy’s early-morning bread rolls quickly before they grow horribly stale)
You could sip the local coconut wine (tuba) gathered in the morning, matured by lunchtime, and leaving you deliciously happy by teatime.
But then I woke up again:
- Transport to the mainland (mainly to pick up money from the bank) depends on - OIL
- That cheap skipjack tuna depends on the Palaw men who go way out to sea to catch them in their newly motorised boats and depends on - OIL
- The single electric bulb that illuminates the main social gathering-place of an evening (Lourdes’ Food Haus) - depends on - OIL
- The electricity that (with interruptions, sometimes for days) powers my computer, my lighting, my fan against mosquitoes, my refrigerator, my microwave (have you ever had fresh tuna fillets, wrapped in banana leaves, just cooked to perfection, with fresh-toasted spices ? - Scrumptious)- depends on - OIL
- There just isn’t a local doctor, so if I’m sick, I’ll have to depend on my expensive ‘insurance policy’ and probably a helicopter, to get me to somewhere where I might survive - that depends on OIL
So, if America makes a mess, and s***s on its own doorstep, the rest of the world has to take the consequences.
regards
Richard
Comment by richard01 — 3 September 2005 @ 7:31 AM
My aforementioned synopsis of Tainter’s case is now up.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 September 2005 @ 3:56 PM
The bad news gets worse:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9227493/
New Orleans’ fouled water going into river, lake
Priority of pumping out city means no chance of cleaning water first
Updated: 1:36 p.m. ET Sept. 6, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. - The brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say.
The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi.
State and federal agencies have just begun water-quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city known as The Big Easy will contain traces of everything imaginable.
“Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It’s a very long list,� said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes.
“And that’s just in a home. Imagine what’s in an industrial plant,� he said. “Or a sewage plant.�
Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.
“There is a disease risk,” Mike McDaniel, head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, told reporters Tuesday. He added, though, that it was premature to call the floodwaters toxic, and that better data should be available Thursday.
“Initial indications are that they are showing large numbers of contaminants,â€? McDaniel said. “We are taking samples … We expect you’re going to see quantities of fuel and gasoline. There are sheens wherever you look.â€?
Rupture dangers
In Metairie, east of New Orleans, the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water.
Those who have waded into it say they could see only about 1 to 2 inches into the depths and that there was significant debris on and below the surface.
Experts said the longer water sat in the streets, the greater the chance gasoline and chemical tanks — as well as common containers holding anything from bleach to shampoo — would rupture.
Officials have said it may take up to 80 days to clear the water from New Orleans and surrounding parishes.
Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground.
“I don’t see how we could treat all that water,� Mallett said.
The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant.
“In effect, it’s going to kill everything in those waters,� he said.
How much water New Orleans holds is open to question.
Van Heerden estimates it is billions of gallons. LSU researchers will use satellite imagery and computer modeling to get a better fix on the quantity.
Rush to get it out
Bio-remediation — cleaning up the water — would require the time and expense of constructing huge storage facilities, considered an impossibility, especially with the public clamor to get the water out quickly.
Mallett said the Department of Environmental Quality was in the unfortunate position of being responsible for protecting the environment in a situation where that did not seem possible.
“We’re not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out,� he said.
The water will leave behind more trouble — a city filled with mold, some of it toxic, the experts said. After other floods, researchers found many buildings had to be stripped back to concrete, or razed.
“If you have a building half full of water, everything above the water is growing mold. When it dries out, the rest grows mold,� Zeliger said. “Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed.�
Comment by Raku — 6 September 2005 @ 3:04 PM
And it isn’t over yet….
But, at least it’s driving home the point (enough to remind me of a lyric from a song that made it into Jesus Christ Superstar’s movie incarnation, but not the Broadway show: “I think you’ve made your point now / You’ve even gone a bit too far to get the message home / Before it gets too frightening, we ought to call a halt / So could we start again please?”)…
Then again, it’s already becoming a case of “Shape of Earth: Views Differ,” isn’t it?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 September 2005 @ 3:55 PM
From the article:
[quote]”We’re not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out,” he said.[/quote]
Read: “…for the sake of civilization and [i]human[/i]lives…”
Certainly we can’t leave the contaminated flood water in place, where things are already quite contaminated, and treat it as we drain it down over the next several years…
—–
Surely we must rebuild the US’s only supertanker port, we must rebuild the US’s damaged oil refinery capacity. We must rebuild the US’s grain and meat export hub to the world… We must rebuild the infrastructure used to house and feed the wage-slaves bent in service to such industry…
We will. We must. (Bet on it.)
—–
Apparently, the entire sea floor off the Orleans’s coast has been shifted and disturbed by Katrina. The old maps and safe sea routes have been rendered essentially useless. Inspection, inventory, salvage, cleanup, rebuilding, and finally transportation must proceed at a very slow and deliberate pace.
Else we might accidentally beach our remaining sea-worthy equipment, or total it on the debris from sunken wreckage. It could take years to return to previous transportation loads. How is the world human population to continue growing without access to our surplus food shipped through New Orleans?
—–
Will Bush Deuce go down in history as America’s Disaster President?
-Jim
Comment by JCamasto — 6 September 2005 @ 4:06 PM
I can’t be too down on Bush. Yes, Leviathan promises to protect us in times such as these–but it’s always been a lie. Of course Bush’s response was criminally inept. I’m not convinced that anyone could’ve done better in his stead, though.
But, I’m not too worked up over the ecological disaster unfolding, either. The Gulf of Mexico has been a steaming cesspool since not long after Kerr McGee first found oil there.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 September 2005 @ 4:18 PM
Read: “…for the sake of civilization and human lives…”
And not even - we’re not even talking about human lives now; We’re talking about human property.
Comment by Raku — 6 September 2005 @ 4:53 PM
There are still some people in there, but most of the property is long gone already. Most buildings will need to be demolished, just to be on the safe side after that kind of exposure.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 September 2005 @ 4:56 PM
Regarding Bush as Disaster Prez: I’m not thumbing him up or down - just linking his happenstance of being the ass occupying the Number One Chair of the mighty US - when the towers fell and the cities flooded…
-Jim
Comment by JCamasto — 6 September 2005 @ 5:23 PM
There are still some people in there, but most of the property is long gone already. Most buildings will need to be demolished, just to be on the safe side after that kind of exposure.
Then what’s the rush to pump it out?
Comment by Raku — 6 September 2005 @ 5:34 PM
Indeed. I believe it was after 9/11 that I predicted that Clinton, through no fault (or virtue) of his own, would be remembered as our Marcus Aurelius, simply for being the man in the chair at the time of our empire’s peak. The Soviet Union gone, the world’s last hyperpower, a booming economy, the golden age of the internets … oh, if Rush could only know that he made his career disparaging one who will likely be remembered as one of our greatest presidents.
I say that without irony, though it is mostly a statement of disdain for how low a bar the American Presidency has historically set.
9/11 was the kind of event that, while relatively small in itself, can set many things in motion. The pebble that sets down the avalanche, if you will. Few yet recognize it as such, but 11 September 2001 marked the beginning of the last war.
That alone was enough to set us marching towards collapse. Now Katrina–an event that also seems like a catalyst, but of a very different kind. We’re watching cascading failures in real time–economic failures, humanitarian failures, ecological failures, infrastructural failures, policy failures, administrative failures, energy failures. It is precisely the kind of event that hits civilization in it’s Achilles’ heel.
Things are happening fast now. The news frightens Giuli. I tell her not to be frightened. The more quickly it happens, the more quickly it will end. And once it is over….
Well, we have a choice on what to focus on. We can focus on the fact that we will soon face the greatest tribulation any animal has ever endured. Or we can focus on the fact that we will soon become the first of our line in dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of generations … to be free.
I remain an optimist. I choose to focus on the promise of what lies on the other side, not the storm that is brewing now.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 September 2005 @ 5:34 PM
Then what’s the rush to pump it out?
They fully intend to rebuild. That can’t start until you pump it out and tear everything down. People can’t come home until new homes are built. Meanwhile, that toxic brew of chemicals, sewage, flood water and corpses threatens to become a massive epidemic. And, there are still some people in there who can’t be rescued until it’s pumped out. So, it’s possible that he was being earnest about his concern for human lives.
Obviously no one cares about the environmental effects … but then, this is the Gulf. Dumping all of that in the Gulf is like pissing on a 10-foot tall pile of dung. Just a toxic lugie in the putrid ocean.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 September 2005 @ 5:38 PM
Tropical Storm Rita is making a bee-line for the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf’s surface temperatures are practically searing. Here’s a bit from the Oil Drum:
The disruption of the Gulf Stream has long been the global warming doomsday scenario–and now we’re actually seeing it happen. It’s making the Gulf of Mexico a veritable factory that turns any cyclone that enters into a major hurricane, and it will likely mean a very cold winter in Europe. In the long run, we’re talking about the end of the modern European climate from this. In the very short term, we’re talking about the possibility of Rita as Katrina’s sequel.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 September 2005 @ 1:25 PM