This weeks discussion topic is about Mother Nature.
Fires-Florida\Georgia
Fires-California
Floods
Tornadoes
Hurricane Forecast 2007
Is it all coincidence or is this something else? Is global warming to blame or is it just a weather cycle?
What can be done to help better prepare ourselves for these natural disasters and is our government prepared for another Katrina?
We'd love to hear your thoughts on these questions or just the topic in general!
5 comments:
I believe that everything happens for a reason and Mother Nature is not exempted from this. Fires that happened in the three states aside from human faulties were due to dry land. It was reported that rains didn't come for so long now. While in Missouri or Kansas (if my memory serves me right)extremes happened. There is flood. Global warming or weather cycle, there are lots of reasons that led one natural disaster to another.
Katrina is huge natural calamity. But why it really became that BIG is precisely because of "beaurocracy" in the government. It is often said that humans are no match to natural disasters. I think the best that we can do as inhabitants of Mother Earth is to take care of the symbiotic relationship we had with nature.
Remember the old television commercial "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." well I think she's getting back at the population for being so strange. Seriously, I don't know what to make of all the weird occurrences in nature. It seems we go through cycles where we have quiet times and them wham things change at the blink of an eye. Then again we are noticing these changes more because of the 24 hour news channels like CNN.
As for the government being prepared for another Katrina no one really knows for sure since they don't say much. However, I do know that many or should I say all places along the Gulf Coast have taken it upon themselves to prepare for the next big hurricane. The big problem now however, is that they are still dealing with the after effects of Katrina and will be for many years to come. So if they get hit again there is no telling what will happen.
And on a final note Hey CNN why no updates on the impending Hurricane Season.
Last week (Thursday) American Morning did an Extreme weather 101 which explained about all the extreme weather we are having lately. One thing to keep in mind is that this is Weather - a day to day occurance. Global warming is a climatic occurance that happens over time but no single thing or series of things can be attributed to it. Yes, if we don't clean up the earth we will have more and more of these incidents but we can't yell global warming everytime we have extreme weather - we will look like the chicken yelling the sky is falling if we do.
The segment on American Morning basically explained that once you get drought, that cycle of weather continues as it feeds off itself until another front or weather cycle comes in to push it aside. The same thing with flooding - the ground gets supersaturated with water, it evaporates feeding the clouds, and they get more rain and more flood. Same with drought - there is no mositure to evaporate to seed the clouds and help it rain so the drought continues until a stronger weather front comes along and starts a new cycle.
Remember that weather is what you see from day to day. Climate is what you see as an average over time. Global warming is a feature of climate that will directly impact our weather but we aren't quite there yet from what I have read - close but this one was specifically addressed as not being caused by global warminig.
Great idea - opening up a topic for discussion each week.
One of the questions that come to my mind is if there's more weather related disasters occuring or are we just getting more/ better coverage by the media of these events?
I'm not trying to suggest that extreme weather isn't something to be concerned about- but in today's high tech - 24 hour- instant access to information- are we seeing more and getting more information now about events that might have only gotten a paragraph or two in a newspaper or a 30 second blip on the evening news?
As far as whether or not we're better prepared to deal with an extreme weather event? As a nation- no- I don't think that we're any better than we were prior to Katrina. (Have the aging levies been fixed yet- not just in the gulf- but across the country?)At a more local level- it really depends on where you live. Some areas are probably better prepared than others.
As Hurricane Season approaches, I have been watching the local news to see how prepared we are for this summer. Not too much has been done to the levees since last year so I am worried that the levees will not hold if another big storm comes through. Remember that the levees failed due to man-made incompetence. After being warned that the city could flood, the Army Corps of Engineers ignored the warnings and did nothing to repair the weak spots. As Anderson said in his book: Mayor Nagin hoped that help would come and hope is not a plan. I think the Corps of Engineers also used hope as a plan.
As for the Road Home Program, it has turned into a giant scam of incompetence by ICF, the company hired to distribute the money. A friend of mine who lived in Lakeview had to have her house demolished because it had 10 feet of flood water. The Road Home offered her money to "renovate" her house. The problem: THERE IS NO HOUSE!! But the CEO's of ICF have received bonuses of one million dollars because ICF had such a great year.
The rebuilding of NOLA has happened because of the spirit of the people. After so many people from our country and all over the world contributed so much money to help us, it is a shame that the money is being so mishandled but "those in charge."
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