They had already had one attack on the WTC, so they should have known better, right?

Disgusting.


New Orleans is a coastal city with an elevation BELOW sea level. The odds of a hurricane flooding the region is so much greater than your example that it is plain you do not care about discussing the real world. Enjoy the make believe world that conforms to what you want to believe.

Winstonfield, the scope of the damage and need WAS known ahead of time. By now everyone knows of the Aug. 28th National Weather Service bulletin with its dramatic wording:

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

.HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

Furthermore, Bush's emergency declaration did not include any of Louisiana's coastal parishes. The freaking coastal parishes. Jeez, you'd think they want to include those when a freaking hurricane strikes. FEMA chief Michael Brown ("Brownie") lied in his testimony to Congress when he said that Governor Blanco never included those parishes in her request for aid, when she had in fact requested aid for "all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting [evacuated citizens]." She made the request on Aug. 27th, two days before Katrina hit.

You yourself state that "No other FEMA effort in a long time needed even a tenth of what New Orleans needed." In other words, Katrina was a crisis of epic proportions. Yet you also claim that disaster relief is primarily a state and local function. So if Katrina was a monster even for the Feds, then how do you expect state and local resources to be able to respond to this epic disaster? That is why we have the federal response, because local resources are easily overwhelmed in crises such as these. And that's how FEMA under Bush failed, because of the shitty response by a shitty boss appointed by a shitty President.

Yes, there is blame to go around, but because of the magnitude of the event it was primarily the Feds' job to take care of things, and they didn't. You don't get to rewrite history like Michael Brown tried to do in order to protect the legacy of your neocon quack of a President.

Yet again, a political commentator spinning crap to get people riled up. Sure, it seemed like a ban on plastic bags was a bit trivial for the UN, but if it is really the second most common form of coastal litter, and disrupting the food chain AS BECK HIMSELF SAID, then maybe it's actually kinda important? Or, REALLY IMPORTANT, considering we humans depend on that very food chain for our survival???

Even if it was true that we stopped using paper bags from environmental concerns, it is perfectly reasonable that the next thing we try could be worse for us in the long run. Even if the re-usable bags we are now using turn out to be worse, does that mean we should stop trying to come up with something better? What sort of sick, backward world do you live in? Oh, yeah, the party of "no".

Wait everybody! Glenn Beck isn't comfortable with change! Let's all go back to living the way we did when he was a kid so that he'll feel better about himself!

Yeah, Beck, I got that twitch you are talking about. You are causing it.

I was mostly referring to the northern megafauna, and mammoth in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction
A definitive explanation for their mass extinction is yet to be agreed upon. About 12,000 years ago, warmer, wetter weather began to take hold. Rising sea levels swamped the coastal regions. Forests replaced open woodlands and grasslands across the continent. The Ice Age was ebbing. As their habitats disappeared, so did the bison and the mammoth.

Whether the general mammoth population died out for climatic reasons or due to overhunting by humans is controversial. Another theory suggests that mammoths may have fallen victim to an infectious disease. A combination of climate change and hunting by humans is the most likely explanation for their extinction.
---
Exactly the point I've been making all these posts. It's just not sure yet, need more work. So you could still be right, but a real scientist would say WE JUST DON"T KNOW YET. Okay he might not shout it, but I will.

This is only one of many coastal attacks that my lord and master is sending to the mortal, so-called civilized societies of Earth. Hahaha, fools.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/piracy

MOMBASA, Kenya – Somali pirates captured four ships and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree, while the American captain freed from their grip planned to reunite with his crew and fly home Wednesday to the United States.

Pirates have vowed revenge for the deaths of three colleagues at the hands of U.S. snipers rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips, as well as for two others slain by French forces in a separate rescue last week.

"Our latest hijackings were meant to show that no one can deter us from protecting our waters from the enemy because we believe in dying for our land," Omar Dahir Idle, a pirate based in the coastal town of Harardhere, told The Associated Press by telephone. "The recent American operation, French navy attack on our colleagues or any other operation mean nothing to us."

In June of '07, I went down to Ecuador to train at an archaeological field school. I was an Anthro minor and intended to pursue a career in Biological Anthropology, specializing in molecular clocking (deducing rates of evolution through DNA base pair variation), and wanted some kind of field experience before finishing undergrad. I just googled archae field schools and picked one. It was run by a university in Florida to which I had no connection whatsoever. It was run by two profs and had two separate classes: one in archaeology (digging) and one in ethnography (meeting people and writing about them). I ended up in the archaeological field school.

Upon arriving, I met the rest of the participants. Many of them knew each other, and I was somewhat of a novelty. The first night, I managed to take the smart but prudish girl back to my room for some "Hey, I just met you, why don't we fool around" action. Little did I know what I was getting into.

She turned out to be crazy. Like top-notch, grade A, never-been-kissed, "I'll give you $100 to take my virginity" crazy. It didn't take me long to make it clear that I was not that in need of cash, and that I was not falling in love. This did not go over well, and for the first two weeks of the six week program, I had to apologize to every fucking person in the camp for subjecting them to the tears of this crazy, immature, raving girl.

However, (this is where it gets interesting) during those first two weeks, I was spending all day in the field away from Crazy, who was studying ethnography in the coastal village where we were camped about 6km away. All day, I was troweling dirt and plotting pits next to one of the hottest and most engaged-to-be-married 20 year old girls I've ever met. At first, her neutrality as a "spoken for" woman was a good haven from the rest of the crowd, who were still kind of up-in-arms about my bagging and bouncing Ms. Crazy. And so, my pit partner and I got along swimmingly, spending the grueling but relieved-from-social-antagonism days talking about this and that. Now, I gotta tell ya, I'm a strapping lad (about 2m ((that's 6'6")) and 115kg ((250 lbs))) and I was very good at the field work. There is very little that impresses women, especially 20 year old engaged-to-be-married women, like being physically excellent at something right in front of them.

Around the end of week two, I started to notice that my pit partner and I were getting all electric and stuff around each other, making eyes and whispering sweet nothings as we toiled away in our dirt hole. Things got spicier and spicier, especially when I found out that the fiance was a wannabe prize fighter who couldn't hold a job, had cheated on her, and held his crotch rocket in about as much esteem as his wife-to-be (also, he bought her a $20k ring and made her mother make the payments on it). As I clearly could not give a flying cockroach's penis about this douche, I let myself really fall for this girl.

At the end of week three, we had four days off to travel wherever we chose. As I tend to be a loner if I don't find a very, very like-minded crony, I was planning to head south to Cuenca for a long weekend of solo traveling. But, as luck/fate/coincidence would have it, I met the soon-to-be-married lady and her traveling group at the bus stop just outside the village, also planning to go to Cuenca. Their group was minus a strong leader and without much Spanish, so I hooked up with them, "and it has made all the difference."

In Cuena, the girl and I fell in love. We didn't touch each other that weekend, but luck/fate/coincidence left us alone together too many times for there not to have been meaning in it. We talked by glowing midnight fountains, got lost on a house party dancefloor, drank too much shitty beer, and stared at the stars from the rooftop we had to crawl out a hotel window to sit on. Neither of us mentioned it out loud, but only used strong suggestion and innuendo. We both knew what was happening, but weren't sure if it was going to work. As I have failed to mention, but the astute reader might already suspect, my former liason Ms. Crazy considered herself to be Soon-to-Be-Married's best friend in Ecuador. She was right there in Cuenca with us the whole time, in complete denial of what was right in her face.

We returned from Cuenca on a Sunday, and I spent Monday and Tuesday white knuckled and sweating as I worked right next to a woman I could have ripped the perfect breast concealing oversized sweatshirt off and really gotten dirty. As she was engaged and about as virtuous as they come these days, no one suspected a thing. We were headed right straight towards Affair City on our pheromone and hormone fueled freight train, and no one else even had a whiff of it.

To this day, not one of the 20 or so other students has any idea that on that Tuesday after Cuenca, as we sat on the porch of my cabin--me playing guitar and her studying for the GRE--this girl and I began one of the world's greatest love affairs. That night, we finally put into words the feelings and fears, and each one assured the other that it would be safe as long as no one knew. At a peak moment in the conversation, I must have asked something like "Well, what's next, then?" The words she answered still echo in my mind whenever I have trouble sleeping. Sultry, slow and with head tilted, she said, "You wanna test the waters?" and glided across the porch and into my lightless room. I sat thinking Oh my god. She just fucking went into my cabin. Holy fuck, I'm gonna. Fuck. Shit. Wow. Wait a sec, she's in my cabin. STFU and get in there! She had to open the door to check if I was coming before the dazzle faded from my mind. I pushed her back into the darkness.

That was nearly two years ago now, and as I write, I am putting this princess to bed in our apartment in Taipei. We carried on an illicit affair, with trysts on 1 a.m. beaches, in shower stalls and in my Pacific breeze filled cabin for a month in Ecuador, and it has lasted to this day, across four continents and literally around the world. I have never written this story down before, and I just thank AC for giving me the forum.

As HollywoodBob said, they are washed away from streets or coastal areas. also a lot of is from the ships that traverse the Pacific ocean. Over the short 40-50 years of plastic history, all those ships that went around the Pacific ocean pretty much just dumped all the garbage they produced while traveling into the ocean, since it is a "vast" place. What people over that period failed to realize till recent;y is that the "North Pacific Subtropical Gyre" formed by all the currents around Pacific ocean have pushed all the trash into one location forming the "great garbage patch". Since the only way for these man made polymers to degrade is UV ray from the sun over a long long exposure.(No microbes can break down plastic yet) being in the water shielded most of it from UV ray making it takes even longer to photodegrade.


>> ^ravioli:
To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.
Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!

What kind of uneducated morons elected this fool?


OTOH, Global warming isn't so bad if you're willing to evacuate every coastal city in the world as the glaciers melt on top of the rocky continent of Antarctica. A pretty big percentage of the world's population lives less than 150 feet above sea level.

Just in Summary:

1) The ice caps that ARE melting: aren't - God promised they wouldn't.

2) There was more carbon in the atmosphere in the time of the dinosaurs.
* the dinosaurs which didn't exist because of the creationist age of the earth
* the ice caps - that didn't exist at that time because they were melted.
* coastal city's are built on coastlines that were underwater in the time of dinosaurs.

3) Coal miners lost their jobs because they work in a polluting industry.
* Miners today can be building turbines or farming biofuel tomorrow.
* A thousand Miners jobs compared to millions of people's homes, food, and lives. It's a small price.

Gotta say, it's nice that he thinks, if we find that it will strike us, that we have the power to do something about it.

Too bad when the time comes to do something everyone will be arguing over what it means, how much it'll cost, and if it's worth saving the lives of the people in coastal areas of if they should just evacuate. Maybe by then the Chinese space program will be developed enough to save us, cause I'm not counting on the western world to do it.

I love these guys, they originate from a small coastal island near where I live. Their lead singer has split but the band is still together.

I posted a fan vid recently:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Mother-Mother-Hayloft

>> ^Pprt It's too bad they don't use their boats to fish the most plentiful coastal waters in Africa... but then again what do I know...


Commercials trawlers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_trawler
are unfair competition and lead to unsustainable fishing practices..

There were about 40 tanks, all headed to Kenya.

Didn't you guys know the Russians and especially the Chinese have been procuring most of the weapons for Africa's recent conflicts?

For China, this is exchange for the colonization of Africa. The Chinese have already created walled cities and practically re-established slavery in many African nations. They are bleeding the richest continent in the world dry as we sleep.

Somalia is in a strategic position for piracy as it is located on the "Horn of Africa" and can conveniently intercept ships transiting between Asia and Europe via the Suez Canal. They are very active pirates, and usually get away with alot, asides from Muslim holidays when they seem to enjoy shooting themselves rather that escape with the booty.

It's too bad they don't use their boats to fish the most plentiful coastal waters in Africa... but then again what do I know...

I think she said we have more hurricaines due to "warming ocean temperatures" not "global warming."

And there seems to be some support for that claim:

...2005 was the most active hurricane season on record, and Atlantic water temperatures were the warmest, about 1.4 degrees above normal. That hurricane season set a new high with 28 storms and 13 hurricanes. Seven of the hurricanes were major storms.

In 1971, when the water temperatures were the coolest, there were 13 storms and six hurricanes, including one major one.

The index of overall hurricane activity was more than twice as high in 2005 as it was in 1971.

The scientists who have linked global warming to stronger storms said the study makes sense, and is, if anything, just repeating and refining what they have already said.

USAToday.com

Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones have always bedeviled coasts, but global warming may be making matters worse. Sea level is rising and will continue to rise as oceans warm and glaciers melt. Rising sea level means higher storm surges, even from relatively minor storms, which increases coastal flooding and subsequent storm damage along coasts. In addition, the associated heavy rains can extend hundreds of miles inland, further increasing the risk of flooding.

The Union of Concerned Scientists