Jackson Free Press

Hurricane Katrina devastated everything it touched, from Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana, but it was New Orleans, which survived the storm only to flood over the following days, that jolted the national psyche. The flood turned the Big Easy into a disaster zone. TV pictures across the globe showed people trapped on rooftops, sloshing knee-high past bloated corpses and sunken cars, old folk in wheelchairs, looters with grocery carts. Most people fled to far-flung places, many to stay for weeks and months. With 80 percent of New Orleans under water, the country that put men on the moon took five days to evacuate hospitals.

Ronald Reagan decried "big guvment" and dismantled the New Deal.

George W. Bush gave us bloated government—slashing taxes, spending trillions, running a swollen debt to Chinese banks for funding the war in Iraq. Four years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the flood exposed an inept emergency response system. After telling his soon-to-be-sacked FEMA director, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job," Bush's popularity plunged, swamped by an image of detachment and incompetence.

In Katrina anniversary packages, we are seeing fresh video of New Orleans' dead neighborhoods, panning abandoned streets and houses still etched with brown waterlines like domestic shells after a neutron bomb. With only 181,000 of the pre-Katrina population of 463,000 back, the infrastructure is fragile—electricity reaches only 60 percent of the pre-Katrina customer base. The water system needs an estimated $2 billion in repair. The flood punctured 17,000 leaks in the 136-mile piping system. As a reduced work force scrambles to repair the worst leaks, the city is losing millions of gallons of water a week, with no rescue package in sight.

Nevertheless, $8 billion in federal funds will soon hit the streets, earmarked for homeowners and businesses that lacked sufficient insurance to rebuild or recoup some of their losses.

There is a shadow-story to this devastation that reaches across the country. In exposing the shoddy system of federal emergency preparedness, the New Orleans flood highlights a far greater crisis: the impact of climate change.

The Planet's Revenge

Katrina was a billboard for global warming. For years, emissions from fossil fuels used by industry and automobiles sent carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that allowed sunlight in but kept heat from escaping, exacerbating the greenhouse effect. As a scientific consensus emerged, Al Gore, then a U.S. senator, made global warming a political issue.

Today's congressional majority under Bush scorns the issue. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." With no hint of irony, Inhofe calls global warming "the big lie," comparing the science behind it to Nazi propaganda leading up to World War II. Here's a fact, senator. One of the biggest U.S. contributors to global warming is the automobile industry, which rather than invest in energy-efficient cars, keeps producing SUVs—profitable dinosaurs that guzzle gas and release more carbon dioxide.

"An Inconvenient Truth," the film based on Gore's ongoing lectures (and the title of his companion book), shows stark scenes of glaciers crumbling and the browning of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania—the snowcaps Hemingway adored are gone. As gases from burned fossil fuels accumulate in the atmosphere, a long melt is under way in Greenland and Antarctica. The melted ice causes seas to rise. As seas rise, their temperatures also rise in hot months. Hotter air and warmer water ignite more powerful storms. (Inhofe told the Tulsa World that every claim in the documentary "has been refuted scientifically," although he conceded he had not seen the film.)

The hottest year on record, 2005, saw the greatest concentration of hurricanes with record winds—Katrina, Rita and Wilma. But the summer of 2006 has brought continuing destruction, only more dispersed.

"We'd have to go back over three decades to find anything comparable to the flooding we're seeing in the Northeast," National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen told USA Today in late June. He was referring to the wash of destruction in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia.

Perhaps the most chilling scene in "An Inconvenient Truth" is an aerial map of Manhattan turning blue-green from flooding. Don't laugh. One hard turn from a Cat 3 hurricane, and the Big Apple could be the next New Orleans.

Perhaps that possibility, coupled with TV coverage of Katrina, explains why people in Manhattan are buying flood insurance. At present, only 28 percent of homes in the Northeast carry flood insurance, compared to 49 percent nationwide, in areas that are considered high-risk.

In his new book, "The Ravaging Tide," Mike Tidwell writes that a rise in sea level of one to three feet will have an impact on "every inch of American shoreline from the Texas coast to the Florida Keys to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Cape Cod. The low-lying areas of San Diego and San Francisco and much of Puget Sound on the West Coast are at great risk, too." He cites an EPA study saying that "no fewer than one in four U.S. buildings within 500 feet of a coastline will be destroyed by erosion by mid-century."

Flooding is America's most common natural disaster. In the decade before Katrina, flooding caused $7.1 billion in losses to homes and businesses. As the intensity and frequency increase, the average home with a 30-year mortgage has a 26 percent chance of taking damage from rising water, compared to a 4 percent chance of fire. As more people buy flood insurance, the financial pressure on the federal government—which backs flood insurance—will escalate in kind.

"Hurricane Katrina's $23 billion (insurance) hit has triggered a full-blown debate about the federal program that insures property in flood-prone areas," author Neil Peirce wrote recently in Stateline.org. "Critics are charging the program's rates are so cheap and its loopholes so broad that it actually puts pressure on local governments to permit new development in extraordinarily flood-prone areas—territory that should never be built on in the first place."

Tidwell assesses wider damage from global warming. The last 30 years in Alaska have seen a temperature rise of 5 degrees. He cites a 4-million acre "forest of spruce trees so vast it's bigger than the state of Connecticut—yet every single spruce is dead." The dead forest is caused by a spruce beetle reproducing at twice its normal rate. "The result is the largest forest die-off by insect infestation ever recorded in North America."

The social Darwinists who control Congress have aped Bush's What-Me-Worry? attitude on environment. "Defense" has meaning only in a military, not environmental, sense. But as scientific data mounts, smarter people are taking a harder, deeper look. "Britain's largest insurance company, CGNU, in 2002 predicted that unchecked global warming could bankrupt the entire global economy by 2065," reports Tidwell.

Failed Values

Human error produced the New Orleans flood—huge flaws in Mississippi River levee projects built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and environmental negligence by government and oil companies that caused wetlands south of the city to erode. The lost wetlands gave tidal waves an open alley to the city. But the dynamics of this failure are national in scope.

"The cost of a collapsing coast is one of fundamental survival," says Mark Davis, director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana in Baton Rouge, a group that has worked on the issue for years. "What happened last year was also the failure of a value system. We assumed we had tamed the forces of nature. We need to understand that if we want there to be a New Orleans, or a Los Angeles, or a Miami, or a New York, 500 years from now, we can't assume they'll be there. We have to plan for them to be there. That's why the rise in sea levels and freshwater management are so extraordinary."

As Davis runs down a list of other cities—including San Francisco, Orlando and Atlanta—where rapid growth has overwhelmed environmental-defense planning, it is worth noting that FEMA considers New Orleans, Miami and New York as the cities most vulnerable to hurricane disasters. More than a third of the 167 hurricanes that struck America in the last century hit Florida. Miami is about 3 feet above sea level, with a vast wetlands complex to the west. Beachfront development and a building boom have packed the area with people. If the ocean levels continue to rise, the area's marshy buffer won't be enough to halt a massive flood. That is what happened to New Orleans.

In the 24 hours before Katrina made landfall, the storm doubled in size, blanketing waters "of the Gulf equal in area to California," report John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein in another new book, "Path of Destruction."

Katrina hit early on Monday, Aug. 29. The eye flattened the coastal town of Buras, sending thunderous waves across villages and hamlets south of the city, tossing cars and boats onto trees and roofs. Winds roared through Lake Borgne, pushing waves 20 feet high. The giant water sheets rolled toward East New Orleans on a passageway between man-made canals. One side of the vast lane straddles a levee along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway; the other levee hugs the eastern side of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, known locally as MR-GO (pronounced, without a trace of irony, "mister go").

"The funnel," where the Intracoastal and the MR-GO meet, sent water throttling between and over the tops of those levees and into the city, as well as nearby St. Bernard Parish—the end result of decades of dredging by the Corps of Engineers. Building MR-GO destroyed 20,000 acres of marshland in the 1960s. Junior Rodriguez, the barrel-chested president of St. Bernard Parish, railed against MR-GO for years. As the Corps dug the alternate shipping lane for moving cargo from the Mississippi to the Gulf, the dredging opened an artery 500 feet wide. MR-GO was finished in 1963.

In 2001, as Christopher Hallowell wrote in "Holding Back the Sea," a prescient book on wetlands loss: "Erosion from ships and storms has gouged it 2000 feet wide and made it a freeway to New Orleans for any hurricane that happens to come from the right direction." Hallowell saw the shape of things to come. "The surrounding marsh, now vulnerable to storms and salt water, has all but died … along with 40,000 acres of mature cypress trees. Now, storm surges can invade the marsh through the straight-arrow channel and smash into New Orleans."

The smashing happened before, in 1965, when Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans. Kenneth Ferdinand, an African-American real estate investor and urban planner, grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward, just across the Orleans Parish line from St. Bernard. In recent years, he sat in regional planning meetings with Rodriguez, sharing his hostility to MR-GO. Betsy's surging waters ramped up the MR-GO, burrowing into the levee along the Industrial Canal, which divides the Ninth Ward into upper and lower sections.

When the Industrial Canal levee broke in '65, a large swath of the Lower Ninth was inundated, drowning 81 people. Ferdinand went into his grandfather's house to claim his body after Betsy. "I've seen this catastrophe twice in my lifetime," says Ferdinand. "The difference between Betsy and Katrina is that the flooding was much worse. And, Katrina wrecked those communities below the Lower Nine"—St. Bernard, and further south, Plaquemines Parish.

The Lower Ninth and St. Bernard Parish were destined to flood because of MR-GO. Even Louisiana's Republican senator, David Vitter—who before Katrina promoted legislation to allow commercial destruction of cypress trees—has come around to saying that the 76-mile canal should be closed. Such a move would allow for some of the lost wetlands to be restored.

A post-storm investigation by the National Science Foundation found flaws by the Corps in the engineering design on canal floodwalls that were meant to drain into Lake Pontchartrain—the 17th Street and London Avenue canals that became flashpoints in the helicopter video coverage. Yet alongside the Corps' mistakes and FEMA's incompetence, the city bears a measure of blame. The city's levee district in the early 1980s pressed the Corps to confine its design scope to a 100-year hurricane defense, which meant the city would pay proportionally less for its cost-share of levee work, freeing funds for lakefront development. The Corps wanted to build canal floodgates in the lake, which might have prevented flooding in much of the city.

The flooding put in sharp relief a central challenge to south Louisiana's survival: coastal erosion and how to remake wetlands as a protective buffer to Gulf hurricanes. The damage was chronicled by Times-Picayune reporters Schleifstein and McQuaid in a 2002 series, by Mike Tidwell in his 2003 book, "Bayou Farewell," and by Christopher Hallowell in his 2001 book on wetlands loss, "Holding Back the Sea," among others.

The land south of New Orleans has been sinking as Gulf waters rise. Tidwell found fishing communities with submerged cemeteries, people whose property had disappeared into the Gulf. The Gulf has swallowed a million acres of wetlands, eroding nature's defense against hurricane tidal waves, opening a destructive path to the city.

Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster (1996-2004) gave petrochemical industries an easy ride for toxic-waste disposal, treating his Department of Environmental Quality like a serfdom. But Foster, a bluff, Falstaffian fellow, liked the great outdoors and became concerned about coastal erosion thanks to a cross-section of business people, fishermen, industrialists, state officials and ecologists who collaborated on a long report in 1998 called "Coast 2050: Toward A Sustainable Coastal Louisiana." Foster gave George W. Bush copies of Hallowell's and Tidwell's books. There is little evidence that he read them. "Coastal 2050" estimated it would cost $14 billion to restore the lost wetlands—big money, but a fraction of the $200 billion in estimated losses from Katrina. In 2004, Bush cut the Army Corps' funding request for levee maintenance by more than 80 percent.

Louisiana's southern parishes are sinking—just as other rural and metropolitan areas along the Atlantic coast will effectively sink as ocean levels rise. For now, the Louisiana case is more severe; it stems in part from 20,000 miles of pipelines that criss-cross the coastal floor to deliver oil and gas from offshore rigs. Another factor for the mass sinkage is the impact of levees built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed in response to the Great Flood of 1927. Containing the Mississippi's currents with stronger levees kept the city safe from the river but bottled up diversionary outlets, which drove streams of river silt like a chute into the Gulf rather than letting the sediment generate sluiceways to replenish tidal marshes. Starved of river nutrients, gouged by pipe excavations, the wetlands eroded and lower Louisiana began sinking in the process.

Nearly 25 percent of all the oil and gas consumed in America travels through Louisiana's wetlands. Roughly a quarter of the nation's seafood was generated from Louisiana's coastal area before Katrina. Since 1932, the state has lost 1,900 square miles of wetlands, an area larger than Rhode Island. Ten square miles disappear annually.

New Orleans Tomorrow

Streams of Mexicans and Latino workers have flocked to New Orleans for construction jobs. The city will resemble an Alaskan boomtown, without the cold or the gold, in the next few years. Music and strip clubs will hum; the spirit of jazz and spontaneous cultural improvisations will roll like a wave from the soul. But the smaller city, with fewer schools, has already become stalked by poverty and crime as drug dealers fight for smaller pieces of turf. It is hard to imagine any of that changing, given the fractured New Orleans Police Department.

So the city will produce for tourists and conventions the spectacles and cuisine for which it is known as the low-end workers who staff the hotels and restaurants struggle to find housing. In all of this, the dead silence of absent leadership—Mayor Ray Nagin's—hangs like a heavy fog in the muggy night. New Orleanians cry out for a comprehensive recovery plan, but Nagin has effectively punted back to the citizens themselves, offering a "plan for a plan," putting the onus on neighborhood groups, a process that will take at least until the end of this year to materialize. By then, billions in federal aid that has been sent down to the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a state agency conceived by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, will have been committed to other parishes that have already adopted recovery plans. When the money runs out, Nagin will have no one to blame but himself.

The Message of Genesis

"A relief bill passed by the GOP House in March managed to omit critical funds for battered levees," The New Republic editorialized Aug. 8. "At times, negotiations stalled because some Republicans tried to divert Katrina relief away from Louisiana."

Yes, indeed.

The social Darwinists who control Congress see New Orleans as expendable, an outer edge of the Third World. This mentality among Christian triumphalists who fueled the GOP resurgence stands in jagged contrast to the scores of churches from red states that sent members to the muddy blue city at the bottom of America, gutting houses, cleaning streets, helping people recover. The Christian triumphalists bought into a Faustian bargain with Bush on the environment. As the administration withdrew from the Kyoto treaty and gutted EPA, so many sheep-like Christian politicos betrayed the message of Genesis, that earth and waters are sacred. Some Pentecostal leaders have started to speak out about global warming, fraying the edges of GOP unity; but don't bet on a herd of new Sierra Club members.

Through the winter, as members of Congress flew down to tour the dead neighborhoods, offering condolences and support (the meaning of which remains opaque), the Democrats failed to make an issue of Katrina—why the flood happened, how to prevent future ones. The war in Iraq was keeping Bush down in the polls, but the flood is what put him there. Perhaps the portents of mass ecological breakdown are a migraine for most pols in the daily rush of seeking money at the trough. Apart from the environmental lobby, it was left to certain members of the media, and Al Gore, to stay on point.

"Environmental defense" is not an issue in most people's minds. The stirrings of a Louisiana plan to prevent future disasters are based on that idea, though no one is calling it that. Here again, the implications are national in scope.

On Aug. 1, the Senate approved a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., that would give Louisiana and other Gulf states a 37.5 percent royalty on 8.3 million acres newly designated for drilling in the Gulf, providing an estimated $200 million annually in the next decade. A House bill by Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who represents suburbs of New Orleans, called for higher royalties, netting $2 billion a year. A compromise bill working through a House-Senate conference should give the state sorely needed funds for coastal erosion. For her part, Gov. Kathleen Blanco sued the federal Minerals Management Service to halt a scheduled lease of oil and gas exploration in the Gulf, arguing that the agency ignored environmental damage caused by offshore drilling. A windfall in offshore royalties would give the state some leverage in shoring up erosion and preventing future destruction.

On Aug. 14, a federal judge denied Blanco's request to halt the lease, but warned potential bidders that the state is likely to prevail on its argument, which could stop drilling on the leased tracts. The federal agency has a 90-day window to accept the bids, just about the time of the scheduled trial.

For now, there is no institutional mechanism to rebuild the eroding coastline. Mark Davis, the outgoing director of the coastal restoration coalition, says that "awareness is at an all-time high, but the decision-making apparatus is not there to do what needs to be done. It's like watching a revival movement, with everyone talking about how good heaven is, but you don't see a great shift in behavior as if people are planning to get there."

Davis, who has worked with everyone from bank presidents to shrimpers, faults a forest of red tape and inertia in Washington. Even if revenues materialize, the state lacks jurisdiction over levees and navigational structures—they fall under federal authority. "The state's ability to change is not just a question of money," he says. "Blanco has come to the realization that the state has to lead the federal government to the answers."

Davis credits Blanco for suing the minerals management agency; she sent a message that the feds must participate in rebuilding the coast.

What kind of institution should guide coastal restoration? And how do you pay for it? "A big problem with major environmental projects is that Congress authorizes funds that take forever to materialize," says Davis. Authorized funding has lagged in delivery in restoration of the Everglades and in a California project to prevent flooding from the Sacramento River that threatens San Francisco Bay. Finding a dependable revenue stream is a big hurdle.

The Tennessee Valley Authority delivered electrification to the middle South during the Great Depression as a federal agency. Why couldn't a similar agency rebuild Louisiana's wetlands as part of an Atlantic coastal protection agenda, with immunity from Congressional pork-barreling?

Whatever the mechanism necessary for a solution, it is way overdue.

The only way to prevent the disaster scenarios that Gore, Tidwell and others put before us is with a mass campaign to reduce global warming. Getting a national strategy is the toughest order, given the slovenly mindset in Congress and the White House. A policy that rewards industry for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, developing energy-efficient cars and homes, and shifting the economy from dependency on fossil fuels may seem unreachable in this maddened time of terrorism and oil wars. The alternative is to sink into a deeper passivity of consumerism. Couch potatoes at the apocalypse, we'll fill up at $5 a gallon and head for the heartland each time the next big one comes, trying not to collide with sweaty nomads from Alaska, all of us carrying a memory of the flood.

Jason Berry is a New Orleans writer whose books include "Lead Us Not Into Temptation," "Vows of Silence" and a novel, "Last of the Red Hot Poppas," to be published in September.

Previous Comments

ID

80419

Comment

Good story. There is a lot of information here. It it rightly an opinion piece, and not a news article, but that's o.k. The connection between the increase in hurricanes and global warming is tenuous at best. The contribution of man to global warming is uncertain. But, even if both are true, the likelihood of mass regulation and bureaucracy solving the problem (as we would get with Kyoto) is infintesimal. If we focus on divesting from fossil fules for other reasons (such as a desire to be rid of our dependance on the middle east) and we focus on mitigating local pollution that we know is dangerous and doesn't require a global bureaucracy to solve, then we will have done at least as much to limit the human impact of global warming as we would have by submitting to a the beauraucratic solution. We have only to look to New Orleans to see that a massive bureaucracy is not the best way to deal with this problem. As for coastal wetlands restoration, there is work ongoing to address this. It is in the science and development stage, however. And, although this takes time, it is necessary. Without a proper understanding of this extremely complicated problem (wetlands loss) it is quite possible that billions could be sunk into solutions that don't solve the problem, or create new ones. .

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-30T23:06:40-06:00

ID

80420

Comment

GLB, it is not an opinion piece although the journalist occassionally expresses his opinion. He does not always list his sources, but if you would like to write him and ask him for a detailed list, I am sure I could arrange it. This story was run by a number of Association of Alternative Newsweeklies papers around the country. If you're not familiar with it, AAN represents most papers like the JFP. Here is a list of papers that are members of AAN. The story was thoroughly vetted to the highest standard factually. Moreover, there is a long history in journalism of writing from a perspective and being open about it. In fact, that form of journalism is far older than New York Times-style pretense to objectivity. It is not as if Berry is trying to trick us when he talks about "social Darwinists." We know he's talking some smack, and we can take it or leave it. This approach has its advantages and disadvantages, but it is certainly legitimate journalism. You expose your profound ignorance when you write: The connection between the increase in hurricanes and global warming is tenuous at best. There is absolutely no question that global warming contributes to the power and frequency of hurricanes. The question is whether global warming is caused by human pollution. The record for highest average global temperature was set in 2005. Large sections of ice in the North and Antarctica are melting. Shipping companies are expanding ports in the North, in Hudson Bay and Russia, in anticipation of clear shipping lanes across the Arctic Ocean in the summer. Hurricans are driven by heat in the Ocean. The reason why Katrina was so devastating was that it picked up so much energy from very warm waters off the Gulf Coast. None of these facts are disputed. As for whether humans are driving global warming, we are still learning about the mechanisms, but scientists all over the world have reached consensus that human carbon dioxide pollution has swamped the carbon cycle and is driving global temperatures higher. The main point of contention is the degree, or the number of degrees, if you will. There are a dwindling number of scientists who dispute human impact, but the consensus is now overwhelming. Remember, there are actually biologists who support intelligent design, but more biologists are named Stephen than there are biologists who dispute that some version of Darwinian evolution lies the foundation for the entire science. The National Center for Science Education has 700 Stephens signed up, just to highlight the absurdity of the full-page ads listing 100 scientists--with lots of different names, you see--who support intelligent design. By the way, they have at least one sophisticated idea for restoring wetlands already. First, you must actually try to do it. There have been great successes in restoring wetlands in Florida, throughout the upper Midwest, California and Belgium. It is not voodoo. Call me opinionated, but I think spending a few billion dollars on wetlands restoration around New Orleans is a sound investment. If we are lucky, we might have some time before another monster storm. Anyway, it's only a week in Iraq.

Author

Brian C Johnson

Date

2006-08-31T00:49:29-06:00

ID

80421

Comment

Brian: You are correct to say that global warming contribuutes to hurricanes. I guess I phrased my statment badly. What I meant was that the recent spate of hurricanes, such as last years, cannot conclusively be tied to global warming, because it could very well reside within the standard deviation of hurricane frequency. The data is just hard to sort accurately, since hurricanes are discrete entities and there aren't many of them in any given year. There is no guarantee that this year will continue to be a down year for hurricanes, but if it is, then what does that mean? If we average this year and last, do we see a trend? There is more scientific disssent over the human contribution to global warming than there is to evolution. Far more. The vast majority of the evidence that is used to establish the human contribution comes from computer models. Computer modes can be extremely usedful for this, since you can take the human influence in and out of the model and directly observe its impact. Unfortunately, in order to model accurately, you must properly represent al the relevant physical processes in the model. And this is very problematic with the global climate, since our understanding of these processese is very superficial for the most part. So, again, the standard deviation of the model results is large, and hence the relaibilty fo hte predictions is not high. The Everglades effort is still ongoing. There is a tremendous amount of science in the Everglades effort, and little has actually been built yet. They are tring to be sure that they don't make things worse by doing the wrong thing. Louisiana is trying to use the Everglades approach in many ways, but Louisiana is several years behind the Everglades effort. If you just blow a lot of money and start moving dirt, you could adversly affect sensitive species, cause local flooding, negatively impact local residents, you name it. It would be a very, very bad idea to just DO something for the sake fo doing it and think that makes things better.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-31T01:12:29-06:00

ID

80422

Comment

Here's a few examples of why I think it's an opinion piece. I'm not commenting on the opinion themselves - they re fine. But I do think it's an opinion piece, and here's some reasons why. Although, having said that, I agree with you that I much prefer this to A "pretence of objectivity". Like I said, I thonk it's a good story. "George W. Bush gave us bloated government—slashing taxes, spending trillions, running a swollen debt to Chinese banks for funding the war in Iraq." "The social Darwinists who control Congress see New Orleans as expendable, an outer edge of the Third World. This mentality among Christian triumphalists who fueled the GOP resurgence stands in jagged contrast to the scores of churches from red states that sent members to the muddy blue city at the bottom of America, gutting houses, cleaning streets, helping people recover. The Christian triumphalists bought into a Faustian bargain with Bush on the environment. As the administration withdrew from the Kyoto treaty and gutted EPA, so many sheep-like Christian politicos betrayed the message of Genesis, that earth and waters are sacred. " "The only way to prevent the disaster scenarios that Gore, Tidwell and others put before us is with a mass campaign to reduce global warming. Getting a national strategy is the toughest order, given the slovenly mindset in Congress and the White House. A policy that rewards industry for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, developing energy-efficient cars and homes, and shifting the economy from dependency on fossil fuels may seem unreachable in this maddened time of terrorism and oil wars."

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-31T01:31:47-06:00

ID

80423

Comment

This link illustrates what I said about the standard deviation of hurricane frequency and power. It's not the perfect illustration, because it only involves hurricanes that struck the U.S. and doesn't show all hurricanes on the planet for each of these years. But that info doesn't exist -- except for the very recent past. Anyway, here it is. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-31T01:50:43-06:00

ID

80424

Comment

One more link. The following is some discussion of the science involved in looking for links between hurricane frequency and intensity, and global warming. It's very interesting stuff. This particular link is to some researchers who advocate the linkage. http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html Two things I will note: 1) The conclusions are based largely on model results. This does not discount them by any means - it just reinforces the reliance on models for much of this research, and all the advantanes and disadvantates that entails. 2) This specific issue (the correlation of hurricanes to global warming) is very much in the midst of robust scientific debate.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-31T09:13:20-06:00

ID

80425

Comment

I meant "advantages and disadvantages". Geez my typing is bad.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-08-31T09:14:52-06:00

ID

80426

Comment

"George W. Bush gave us bloated government—slashing taxes, spending trillions, running a swollen debt to Chinese banks for funding the war in Iraq." How is this "an opinion"? Has Bush done these things, or has he not? I believe you'll find that he has indeed done them, and expanded the size of the federal government (as measured by spending) in the bargain, justifying the "bloated government" claim. The fact that it's expressed in strong language doesn't automatically mean it's opinion. Best, Tim

Author

Tim Kynerd

Date

2006-09-01T11:50:35-06:00

ID

80427

Comment

Tim: The other two examples I cited are definitely opiniion. I cited this one because the words he uses to describe it are chosen to impart judgement on the actions of the administration. So, if it had read something like this I would say it was a straight news item: 'Under the Bush Administration, the federal government has cut takes and increased spending. It has partially paid for the Iraq War by placing the country deeper in deby to Chinese banks." Even then, though, I'm not sure all the points are legitimately related. taxes have been cut, but to the best of my knowledge actual revenue has increased, because of greater available taxable wealth. Also, there is always a perception that any money diverted from other projects to the Iraq War would somehow have been magical money, capable of solving all the worlds ills, if only it had been spent on levees, or airport security, or whaever. Nevemind that massive amounts of money have been spent on thigs like this before, and the problems still persist. In other words, I think the linkage of every failing of the government to money diverted to the Iraq war is a bit of a stretch. But, nevermind all that. That's just my opinion. I think it's fine for him to use the language that he used, but I just think that makes it an opinion piece -- that's all.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-09-01T13:37:29-06:00

ID

80428

Comment

Fighting over whether a thoughtful, researched, well-written piece is subjective or "opinion" is just another way to put off talking about the real issues. It's been a prime tool of the far-right now for a good 20 years, and it has really worked to polarize people into two fake opposite camps. People, no published article is objective. Ever. If a writer tells you they are "objective," they are lying to you. At the JFP, we don't feign objectivity. We also don't ignore important facts because it might offend someone. We spend our time working to build trust based on solid reporting and not giving a damn about offending someone politically with the truth. Agree or disagree, but don't waste my time or anyone else's arguing about whether a piece is opinion. Be glad that the writer bothered to be honest to let the reader know his biases, and look at whether or not you think his basis for his conclusions is valid. *That's* critical thinking.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-09-01T16:15:42-06:00

ID

80429

Comment

Ladd, Like I said, I don't really care that it is an opinion piece. But I was just saying that I think that's what it is. I certainly didn't use that an any excuse to avoid looking at the content: on the conrary, I have addessed the content directly, as that is what interests me about the story. I guess I could contrast it with the two cover stores you guys did about the LaFleur Lakes. I don't remmeber who the author is, but I thought those who two excellent investigative stories. I'm sure the author had an opinion, but, regardless, he (or she?) faithfully reported on all sides of that issue, and laid it out in a very clear, detailed format. I thought those were two of the best storeis of their type I have ever read anywhere. This story is good, but it is in another category to me because it is closer to an editorial than it is to a reporting story. The Lafleur Lakes stuff was closer to a reporting story than an editorial.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-09-01T17:21:13-06:00

ID

80430

Comment

This is opinion, but I think we covered that. My journalism professors always said "if you can figure out the author's biases, it's opinon." For contrast, the story Casey did on Roy McMillian was outstanding in my view. My only concern would be this piece would hardly convince any of the groups he blasts with invective and hyperbole that their positions are wrong.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2006-09-01T21:25:13-06:00

ID

80431

Comment

My journalism professors always said "if you can figure out the author's biases, it's opinon." My response to that would be: If you can't figure out the author's biases, it's PRETENDING to be objective. Everybody has biases, and it is all but impossible to keep them out of one's writing. The choice of what to write about involves biases. The choice of which aspects of a subject to spend time on involves biases. The choice of which facts to include in a piece involves biases. I'd much rather read a piece where I can see those biases right up front than a piece that is written dryly and "objectively," but still only gives me one side of the story (i.e., a typical modern daily newspaper article). The latter is actually much more deceptive.

Author

Tim Kynerd

Date

2006-09-06T11:13:56-06:00

ID

80432

Comment

What makes a piece of information opinion rather than fact when the statement rests within the context of a story in the context of an audience? A fact can only exist in a vacuum...as in "this table is white" or "women over 45 have a 15% greater risk for having down syndrome babies." Contextualize either of these statements within an article, culture or conversation and immediately you have created implicit assertions. If i say this table is white i am saying it is the same color as the white wall it is next to...but it isn't or is to a degree. If i actually quote pregnancy facts to someone such as an older woman, am i saying that she as an individual has a 15% greater risk? Can you associate facts together in the effort to communicate without it being somewhat opinionated? If something is somewhat opinionated isn't in fact an opinion. To whatever degree my mouth is open it is open regardless if it is a millimeter or an inch. The fact of opinion is a fact implicit in relating information. When a journalists makes an attempt at "straight" reporting, she does an injustice to the people by misleading them into thinking that what they are reading is an objective representation of the facts of reality. This cannot be done. Even the organization of straight facts imparts slant. As for your examples, they hardly mask informative recognitions of the state of our government....these same examples of true behavior could probably rest in more flattering verbage that would make a conservative smile with pride. In the second example, to call Congress social darwinists is to recognize the new realization of the corporate ideal of the bottom line as it is being applied to the protection and concern for our nations people. It is no question that the Republican party firmly identifies itself with the Christian religion and that there reactions in regards to supplying aid to those affected by Katrina were in stark contrast to those churches who swamped to lend a helping hand. The fact is that Bush has pulled out of tackling the issue of how to properly steward our environment and clearly recognizes privatization and reliance on corporations to police themselves. The majority of his party in office have agreed with this move by allowing themselves to be led in such a direction by their leader...in other contexts we might not think the sheep reference wholly negative. Often times we look for a leader worth being led by. And what is the message of Genesis? Definitely the first sentance of the 3rd example is directing the course of the paragraph...but past that is the congress not slovenly? Congress spends less days in session than ever before? View this chart from 1969 to 1999 http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly17.asp And it is hardly a false insinuation that unprecedented spending on military issues makes it unlikely that we can focus on becoming more frugal an responsible with our energy consumption.

Author

daniel johnson

Date

2006-09-10T12:13:54-06:00

ID

80433

Comment

Daniel, you're post is very interesting. But I'm not sure who you are addressing with it. It seems like you are addressing me. But if so, I'm not sure why. I didn't say it was BAD that it was opinion, that's just what I said it was. And, as far as I can tell, you agree. You tend to agree with the authors opinions, and note evidence to support them. But, ok fine, you agree with him-- that's fine with me. I took issue with some of the connections that the column made ( e.g. the attempt to directly connect a specific hurricane with global warming, and then with environmental policy). But I have no problem with it being an opinon piece. So maybe I'm missing it. In what way do you and I disagree on this?

Author

GLB

Date

2006-09-11T00:02:50-06:00

ID

80434

Comment

Maybe it would help if I clarified something. I am not invoking the word "opinion" to be dismissive. That technique infuriates me. It happens to me a lot. I will say what I think about something, and someone will say "we'll, that's just your opinion". As if that settles it somehow. Regardless of whether, or to what degree, something is opinion, it must still be dealt with based on it's content. So, I say all this to agree with all of you that to call something opinion is by no means to be dismissive of it.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-09-11T10:24:23-06:00

ID

80435

Comment

So, I say all this to agree with all of you that to call something opinion is by no means to be dismissive of it. Thank you for clarifying this. I did think that when you said this piece was opinion, you were being dismissive because as you yourself just said, that's the usual tactic. I'm glad to know differently. Best, Tim

Author

Tim Kynerd

Date

2006-09-11T12:40:33-06:00

ID

80436

Comment

Thanks, Tim.

Author

GLB

Date

2006-09-11T13:46:23-06:00