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80% of New Orleans is inundated by hurricane Katrina - August 29, 2005
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Hurricane Katrina has devastated an area as large as Great Britain with 140 mile/hour (225 km/hour) winds and a 20'-0 (approx. 7 meters) storm surge that reached as far as six miles inland and has left 80% of New Orleans submerged in a witches' brew of seawater and sewage, oil and fuels from service stations and cars, paints, solvents, pesticides and household chemicals from warehouses, stores and homes, and rotten fish, animal and human corpses. At this date of September 5th, New Orleans is still inundated, and it is expected that the death toll from injuries, drowning, heat stroke, lack of food and drinking water will total many thousands. And the damage is estimated to exceed 50 billion dollars.
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The destruction wrought by category 4 hurricane Katrina has been called a disaster of biblical proportions by many. Yet, it won't be a one-time 'biblical' event - like Sodom and Gomorrah. It will happen again, and again, and again, and it will increase in severity and frequency. It could happen this year - Pensacola was devastated by powerful hurricane Ivan in September 2004, and hurricane Dennis came ashore just east of Pensacola last month, and another town in Florida was hit twice in three weeks last year - or next year, or the year thereafter. It not a question of if; it's a question of when.
Meanwhile, this region will be hit by increasingly more violent hurricanes, as the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico continue to become warmer and warmer - not only due to the Greenhouse Effect, but also as the direct result of the increasing incidence of the higher energy UVB radiation at sea level. This will also loft more water into the atmosphere, resulting in devastating downpours and floods. Just recently, in Austria as I recall, such a downpour dumped 3'-0 (approx. 1 meter) of rain on the region in one day, and on September 6 this year, Taifoon Nabi dumped 2'-8" inches of rain in one day on southern Japan.
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All of this will become more and more common - as at least some people have begun to realize now - and exactly as I had predicted ever since 1985 (see ON THE RECORD - when what's happening now was unthinkable).
Since New Orleans will be hit by another category 5 or 6 hurricane again sooner or later, it will be futile to rebuild. In my view, it would be best to turn the area affected by Katrina into a park.
All this is the direct result of the massive deforestation of the continents - including the eradication of mangrove forests and the draining of wetlands. We are turning what has been essentially a "Forest Planet" until fairly recently, into a "Desert Planet" - along with the severe diurnal and annual fluctuations typical of the desert - but on a planetary scale, all as described in these pages.
However, we can terminate the Greenhouse Effect and return to normal stable climates with a highly effective two pronged approach. First and obviously is the reforestation of the Earth - and before someone says impossible, where is our agriculture and living space to go - there are huge semi-arid, arid and desert areas which can be quickly and easily re-greened and then re-forested, for it does not matter much on the planetary scale where the forests are.
Of course, it is mandatory that we retain all our current forests, and we would be wise to turn our cities and towns into "urban forests" as well. As a great bonus, we get to live in park-like settings, with a large reduction in energy consumption for air conditioning etc, and a great increase in air quality and livability, all as described in these pages.
Second is the quick and easy switch from gasoline to methane fuel for our cars, busses, trucks, commercial and home heating, cooking etc, (see "GAS - 10 CENTS PER GALLON - YES ! in these pages).
Methane [CH4] is a more powerful and far better, far cleaner and far less environmentally damaging fuel than gasoline. It has substantially lower carbon dioxide emissions, which will substantially reduce the Greenhouse Effect, and it also has very substantially lower particle emissions, which will substantially reduce the smog which now plagues so many of our cities. This also results in a very substantial increase in public and personal health, as many diseases, among them Asthma, Chronic Bronchitis, Chronic Sinusitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, are caused by smog.
The beauty is that besides the existing sources of geological sources of methane - chiefly coal mines, and there is an all but inexhaustible deposit of frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans as well - methane can be easily produced from the fermentation of animal and human 'manure', as well as siphoned off from landfills. It is a cheap and inexhaustible fuel. The technology exists - as of 2005, Volvo has already produced 12.000 vehicles which can run on either methane or gasoline, or both - and methane is being produced, particularly so in Europe, on a fairly large scale. In Europe, chiefly in Sweden, Germany and Italy, about 400 methane gas stations are opened per year.
The even greater beauty is that the immense problem of pig manure - which makes South Carolina, and other pig, chicken, steer and lamb producing regions stink to heaven - can be turned into a huge double-whammy profit centre by producing methane, as well as a rich and high potency organic fertilizer, and come out smelling like roses in the process.
By acting now, we can begin to alleviate the Greenhouse Effect in as little as 10 years, and substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks within 5 years. All cities suffering from smog would be well advised to mandate the conversion of all local vehicles to methane fuel.
The following graph shows how my predictions, first made in 1985 - when there was no indication whatsoever that anything was amiss, and drastic climatic change was inconceivable - have come true right on schedule. That the following climatic extremes were not just extreme fluctuations within a relatively stable historic range, and that climatic extremes would continue to increase, was not realized until 1993. For my continuing predictions for the next 50 years, see
PREDICTIONS in the biosphere section.
As you can see, it is a sharply rising upward curve and, unfortunately for us, these climatic dynamics will continue along this sharply rising curve. What will come next are vast forest fire conflagrations, and a progressive loss of free oxygen in our atmosphere - a process which is already underway (see OXYGEN DECLINE in the biosphere ).
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