Climate Change V

 

Cell Block Tango

He had it coming'
He had it coming'
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there
If you'd have heard it
I betcha you would have done the same

Nobody could have seen it coming?  Really?  Really?

G. W. Bush famously said that nobody could have foreseen the disaster in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina and that he and FEMA Administrator Brown did a great job.  I beg to differ.  Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005.  I worked on a report for the US DOT, Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure- Gulf Coast Study, Department of Transportation, Washington, DC, March 2008, which studied the impact of climate change on the Gulf Coast. It studied the impact of hurricanes, their wind, rain, and storm surges, as well as sea level rises in the coastal areas of the United States from Mobile Bay, Alabama, to Galveston Bay, Texas.  That study and that geographic area were chosen in part because of an article in Scientific American, Drowning New Orleans, in the October 2001 issue which discussed the impact of a hurricane on the levees and dikes protecting New Orleans.  Katrina accidentally provided a natural experiment with which to examine and validate those methods in our study.  Also Hurricane Rita struck Houston and Galveston on September 24, 2005.  By that time evacuation plans had been developed for Houston and the success of those evacuation plans could also be evaluated.

Could anyone have predicted the date and the hour in which a hurricane would strike? No, but the impacts were known in advance. The impacts of Katrina were very much in keeping with the article in Scientific American less than 4 years earlier.  The evacuation plan for Houston called for the orderly, timed evacuation of the city in only 1 vehicle per household.  A meeting was held to evaluate the findings of the study which included the very persons who prepared the evacuation plan for Houston.  They admitted that they also had to evacuate but they used every car in their households, as many as 3 cars per household, as soon as the evacuation of any geography had begun, without waiting for their turn just like everyone else. It is any wonder that the roads during the evacuation were jammed.  IOW do as I say, not as I do.  Great job, Brownie!!! You are not to blame!!!!