>> ^ghark:

How many people are actually staying? Surely it is common sense at this point to move away from the area - are people waiting for the government to tell them it is not safe, or is that they need financial assistance to move?


Same reason so many people didn't leave New Orleans after Katrina... not everyone can just pack up and leave.

God, I hate to digress, but the problem in Katrina wasn't looting and lawlessness. The problem in Katrina was american citizens stranded, starving, abandoned and ultimately dying. I would still send in the National Guard, though -- for rescue, not assault.>> ^Mikus_Aurelius:
I don't like the Katrina/Oil spill equivalence.
How do you stop a deep water leak? How do you keep the oil on the ocean from getting to shore? These are difficult technical questions. I don't know the answer. You don't know the answer. Oil companies don't know the answer. Why do we expect our government to know the answer?
On the other hand, the problem with Katrina was looting and lawlessness. We all know how to fix that: send in the national guard with rations and rifles. Keeping order and feeding disaster victims is government's job. They blew it.

I don't like the Katrina/Oil spill equivalence.

How do you stop a deep water leak? How do you keep the oil on the ocean from getting to shore? These are difficult technical questions. I don't know the answer. You don't know the answer. Oil companies don't know the answer. Why do we expect our government to know the answer?

On the other hand, the problem with Katrina was looting and lawlessness. We all know how to fix that: send in the national guard with rations and rifles. Keeping order and feeding disaster victims is government's job. They blew it.

Every since she started liking other planets, she's gone by the name gaya.
>> ^chilaxe:

I'm concerned this might anger the Earth Goddess, Gaia.

@chilaxe total agreement there.

@campionidelmondo, nope, no subscriber to the idea that Democrats are saints, just a subscriber to the idea that Republicans are wholly lost to the kind of evil that gets us into these situations.

I'm not so sure the theory that Obama is staying out of it to keep from getting the blame holds much water. For one, Obama keeps coming on TV to take responsibility for this. For another, everyone in the media is already ramping up to call this Obama's Katrina, and a lot are already taking the "what did you expect BP to do other than maximize profits?" line to defend BP against punitive measures taken by the government.

I'm at a loss to describe anything more that Obama or his administration can actually do at this point that he hasn't done already. A lot of what I hear these days are some variation of "take control of BP, and hand it over to <insert government agency here>", with "the military" being most often suggested as the branch of government that should take control. Of course, there's no suggestion on what more they could actually do if they took control, other than dig up more dirt on BP's negligence.

Mostly I think at this point he needs to run more of a PR operation to make sure people are more acutely aware of what he's already doing, so people stop pretending like he's doing nothing. Kinda sad, but at this point it seems like the only way to fend off the media narrative that's being built.

>> ^Crake:

sure, it's large scale geo-engineering, but it can only lead to greater knowledge of how such systems work, and maybe greater control of them. presumably the hundreds of salter sinks will have temperature monitors as well, and could be used to actually test hypotheses, instead of just waiting for events.

Yeah, great. Let's just cool the surface of the ocean enough to disrupt weather patterns and see what happens. Are you seriously suggesting that's a good idea?

Bear in mind that the heat transferred away from the surface isn't disappearing. This could actually end up being a more efficient way of getting heat into the ocean, leading to more heat energy in the oceans and all the fun and games that would go with that.

>> ^Hybrid:

Sure it's a great way to prevent hurricanes. But let's not forget hurricanes are natural and I'm not sure it's a good idea to mess with oceans on such a large scale like this. These temperature changes in the ocean have wider implications than just occasionally creating hurricanes.


sure, it's large scale geo-engineering, but it can only lead to greater knowledge of how such systems work, and maybe greater control of them. presumably the hundreds of salter sinks will have temperature monitors as well, and could be used to actually test hypotheses, instead of just waiting for events.

Successfully processed your "amazon" invocation - view all Amazonized posts here

>> ^NordlichReiter:

This guy is pretty stupid.


It is surprising hard to get the right information out at the right time in these time-critical situations. That was precisely one of the things that lead to the Katrina-mess in the first place. If you've got a city full of people to think about, where every last one needs to hear the correct message, bringing up what happened when everything went wrong in the same situation months earlier, is not going to be helpful. There is a time and place to evaluate what went wrong the last time, but thats not in the middle of a new storm.

>> ^dotdude:

Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area on 8/29/05.
http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1352&
;year=2005
Hurricane Rita hit west Louisiana around 9/24/05. This press conference (in New Orleans) is happening prior to Rita making landfall - when the storm's exact course was in flux.
http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1358&
;year=2005


That's the context I was lacking from this, thanks for posting the time line. This guy sounds like a movie character, one of the good guys

Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area on 8/29/05.

http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1352&year=2005

Hurricane Rita hit west Louisiana around 9/24/05. This press conference (in New Orleans) is happening prior to Rita making landfall - when the storm's exact course was in flux.

http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1358&year=2005

Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area on 8/29/05.

http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1352&year=2005

Hurricane Rita hit west Louisiana around 9/24/05. This press conference (in New Orleans) is happening prior to Rita making landfall - when the storm's exact course was in flux.

http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/createstorm.asp?stormnum=1358&year=2005

@silvercord, let me get this straight. Me giving my own opinion is a "filter"?
>> ^silvercord:

You used the filter again in your first paragraph when you wrongly guessed at why I pointed to Hanson's curriculum vitae. gbfunk did, after all, ask for a "conservative opinion," and not a "fair and impartial judge." I was holding up his credentials for two reasons. He is first a conservative and second, he has credentials to prove it. It is a valid conservative view.

Okay, so his CV was to prove that he was conservative, not that he was necessarily going to make valid points. Fair enough.

>> ^silvercord:
Not so by the way, the publication you referenced (The American Conservative Magazine), after apologizing for previous "rough treatment" of Hanson, goes on to call him "one of America’s premier public intellectuals." This, in an introduction to an article written by Hanson and published last November.

Wait, so his CV was about his ability to make valid points?

Let me try to make my point again without putting in the barbs, and see if you would like to respond to it directly.

The original request was for "a place to go where ... intelligent conservatives actually have valid points and constructive criticism on todays issues".

I read that as meaning that he's looking for somewhere, anywhere to regularly find commentary that:

1. Makes valid points
   
2. Contains constructive criticism
   
3. Discusses today's issues
   
4. Is written by people who are intelligent conservatives
   

I'm happy to concede that the article you linked meets that 4th criteria. I'll even say that there's an argument to be made that the 1st is met also. I contest that it meets the other two.

His CV has nothing to do with points 1-3.

You did vaguely attempt to address criteria #3 with this:
>> ^silvercord:
As to your charge that there is no critique of Obama's policies, I will leave that up to gbfunk to decide. While you may take a more legalistic approach to the word 'policy' in order to skate around some of our President's more glaring inconsistencies, I am certain the American public isn't as careful.

...but I read that as "you're right, I'm not talking about issues, but I doubt my audience will notice, so stop pointing it out."

Seriously, there's a ton to criticize about what Obama's doing without having to say "he's a liar". Hell, if the whole case you want to make is "Obama tells lies" you don't even have to dig into campaign promises. But that's not constructive criticism, and none of it is really about the issues.

For example, the statement "Obama bears responsibility for having permitted BP to do offshore drilling without having made enough of an effort to ensure that it would be safe" is a valid point. "Therefore, Obama should fire the people responsible at MMS, and put new procedures in place to ensure that oil companies follow the appropriate safety tests before operating a rig in American waters" would be constructive criticism.

I don't even know where to find the conservative policy idea to deal with what's happening in the gulf, or how they would try to prevent future problems.

All I know is that the right wants to say it's all Obama's fault, and it's Obama's Katrina, and it's not all that bad anyway so we should keep drilling, and liberals should have never blamed Bush for Katrina, and BTW, didn't Obama say during the campaign that he's opposed to offshore drilling?

Not really constructive, not really valid, and not really even about the issue. It's horrifying that so-called "intelligent conservatives" think this is the way they should talk about today's issues.

That's my point, and I daresay it was gbfunk's as well.

Hurricane Katrina wasn't natural. Its a city we built that, over time, ended up under sea level. It was just a matter of time that it would get flooded. Oh and people blame bush for not helping people soon enough, not for causing in a hurricane.

This article compared this oil spill to oil spills related to Hurricane Katrina in '05 and Exxon-Valdeez in '89:

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/04/long-term_impact_of_gulf_of_me.html

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
I guess nature isn't done screwing with you, huh
I hope that thing gets contained in time, but there isn't much hope for that, is there
In reply to this comment by dotdude:
I've posted some links from our local paper concerning your oil spill video:

http://videosift.com/video/Gulf-Of-Mexico-Oil-Spill-Forecast?loadcomm=1#comment-987472