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On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:31:46 GMT, "Name" <newbie@home.> wrote:
"Drowning New Orleans
A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing
thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically
increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern
Louisiana can save the city":
www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-
8B5883414B7F0000
I like this kicker:
"If Congress and President George W. Bush hear a unified call for
action, authorizing it would seem prudent. Restoring coastal Louisiana
would protect the country's seafood and shipping industries and its
oil and natural-gas supply. It would also save America's largest
wetlands, a bold environmental stroke. And without action, the million
people outside New Orleans would have to relocate. The other million
inside the bowl would live at the bottom of a sinking crater,
surrounded by ever higher walls, trapped in a terminally ill city
dependent on nonstop pumping to keep it alive.
Funding the needed science and engineering would also unearth better
ways to save the country's vanishing wetlands and the world's
collapsing deltas. It would improve humankind's understanding of
nature's long-term processes--and the stakes of interfering, even with
good intentions. And it could help governments learn how to minimize
damage from rising seas, as well as from violent weather, at a time
when the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts
more storms of greater intensity as a result of climate change. "
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