Sea of Atlantis - The Future City of New Orleans - 2011

 

 

Sea of Atlantis

The Future City of New Orleans 

A characteristic lesson from the fall of Atlantis is that humans can manipulate matter. Furthermore, humans can appear to bend Nature to their needs. However, neither the Atlantean culture nor our own can control the laws of Nature.

 

To demonstrate that human control of nature is an illusion, look no further than the perceived permanence of the Old River Control Structure, 135 miles upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana. Atlantean elite labels and slogans are often so audacious, that their unrealistic goals sound heroic or mythical. Imagine the audacity of using poles stuck in the mud to control the largest river in North America. In anticipation that their designated mounds of earth would stay where expected, the Army Core of Engineers (COE) named it a “river control structure”. Prefacing that moniker, should be the word “temporary”.

 

After the experiences of Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 flooding in Pakistan, it is reasonable to believe that New Orleans might yet experience simultaneous floods of each type. The scenario goes like this:

 

• When a Katrinaesque hurricane makes landfall at New Orleans, resultant storm surge and overflow from Lake Pontchartrain floods much of the city.
• As the storm travels north, it stalls and dumps unprecedented rainfall on the Middle and Upper Mississippi River Valleys.
• When the resulting flood crests at the Old River Control Structure, catastrophic failure ensues, sending one uncontrolled torrent down the Mississippi River Channel and another down the Atchafalaya River.
• As an unprecedented flow reaches New Orleans, the city floods yet again, only this time there are few if any levees still standing to protect it.

 

In the aftermath of a simultaneous Katrina-style storm surge and a Pakistan-style river flood, New Orleans could well be unsalvageable. After such a super flood, the Mississippi River Channel through New Orleans would become a silt-clogged riverbed, rather than the deep channel of today. Unless stakeholders plan now for decreased reliance on river and port traffic for economic vitality, New Orleans faces the possibility of a flood-induced economic collapse.

 

Have we learned our Atlantean lessons? For the most part, the answer is, “No”. We prefer the nostalgia of the French Quarter; a streetcar named Desire and a wonderful cultural history to prudent post-Atlantean and post-Katrina planning. Mythical thinking will not end global warming, higher sea levels or stronger storm surges. Regardless of who or what caused global warming, reputable scientists agree that future weather trends include higher average surface temperatures. From Venice, Italy to Bangladesh, to the Seychelles Islands, the accelerated pace of coastal and island flooding worldwide shows no signs of abating. If the Greenland ice shelf melts away, we may not be discussing the prospects of saving any of those places, as they may already be slipping beneath the waves.

 

Since Katrina in 2005, the federal government has spent an estimated $125 billion in and around New Orleans. As a citizenry, we should now determine how much we plan to spend on any flood prone region. More important, what we wish to accomplish with those funds? As long as the option for rebuilding a full-sized, old style New Orleans is on the table, the cost may well be too high to bear. Currently, few of the local, state or federal stakeholders are willing to downscale their ambitions. Instead, they attempt to resolve the issue with public proclamations, featuring new and soon to be inadequate levees. Dubbed “The Great Wall”, one new storm surge barrier reminds me of the original Great Wall of China. Astronauts report that the original Great Wall is the only manmade structure easily visible from the International Space Station. History showed that those massive bulwarks did little to prevent nomadic groups from entering the Chinese Empire. Likewise, the new Great Walls will not fully protect New Orleans from category-five hurricanes.

 

Extensive dredging and reworking of the watercourses throughout the Mississippi River Delta have made defending New Orleans more difficult. After it snakes through the city, the Mississippi River deposits almost none of its silt in shallow water. Instead, the river rushes past New Orleans on a fast trip to the Gulf of Mexico. Bypassing any remaining wetlands, the silt plunges deep into the Gulf. On its descent to the seafloor, the silt releases a toxic mixture of fertilizer and chemicals. Suspended in the water column above the silt beds is a vast hypoxic dead zone. Not even bacteria can survive in its oxygen-depleted environment.

 

In June 2010, the federal government dedicated over $14 billion to rehabilitation of Louisiana wetlands. At the same time, rumor had it that President Obama supported a redirection of the Mississippi River as a mechanism for providing silt to those wetlands. To accomplish that goal, he might order the COE to flip-flop the water delivery ratios at the Old River Control Structure. New Orleans would henceforth receive huge amounts of silt, but far less water. Concurrently, the Atchafalaya River would take its place as the terminal distributary of the Mississippi River. Upon settling downstream from New Orleans, the newly redirected silt would naturally rebuild fisheries, bayous and marshes. In turn, the larger wetlands would form a natural storm surge barrier for the city.

 

Only the Mississippi River can discharge the silt volume required to rebuild the wetlands. If humans or Nature can slow the velocity of the river, soils from more than a dozen states might begin to precipitate out near New Orleans. Only then would the river become a useful tool for rebuilding the wetlands of the Mississippi River Delta. If ever there was a good argument for letting Nature take her course, this may be it.

 

As a cultural landmark and a great historical city, I love New Orleans. Sadly, it has now become a poster child for Atlantean mythical thinking. As a society, we must be willing to create an infrastructure and investment strategy for New Orleans that has finite goals and limits. What budgetary amount we agree upon is less important than being realistic about our attempts to control Nature. Once realism returns to the process, scientists and engineers can combine efforts and create appropriate defenses for core locations and critical functions throughout the region.

 

Although almost no one wants to hear it, New Orleans should utilize its lowest lying and most vulnerable areas as storm surge basins. After relocating low-income residents to safer areas, the city could afford to sacrifice low-lying areas to flooding, while protecting and preserving a more defensible city core. Ultimately, it will be less expensive to provide a Brad Pitt House in a new neighborhood for each low-lying family than to leave entire neighborhoods in peril. Once the lowest lying residents move out, those areas could become parks or urban farms. With no fulltime residents in harm’s way, the cost of future flood protection and reconstruction would be far lower.

 

Any legitimate plan for New Orleans must recognize the near inevitability of storm surge and river related flooding. Even with a pragmatic plan, rather than a political one, there is no guarantee that a great flood will not inundate New Orleans. The strategy that I suggest would allow a smaller city to survive longer than the current “full city” strategy, while saving both money and the environment in the process.

 

 Read Chapter One

Read Chapter Two

Read Chapter Four

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By James McGillis at 01:43 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

The 2006 Midterm Elections Revisited - Remembering Sputnik & "The Space Race in the 1950s"

 

The 2006 Midterm Elections Revisited - Remembering Sputnik and "The Space Race in the 1950s"

November 9, 2006

 

Now that the midterm election is over, we can all relax and just enjoy the play-out of the new energies.  Will anything "really" change?  Probably not much will change, at least on the visible surface.  There will be some old familiar faces on TV - Carl Levin, Charlie Rangel, even that flaming liberal, Henry Waxman.  That should be fun. 

 

Just yesterday, #43 reached again into #41's old bag of advisers for a new Secretary of Offense.  Still, his pig-headedness and "take the fight to the enemy, even if we don't know who they are or where they live" will keep the lid on change at any easily accessible level (Faux News, etc.).  #43 has become sort of like Ariel Sharon (brain dead, to be sure), but always predictable in his use of force, in a "Dick Cheney" sort of way.  Rover tried to "lean 'em to the right" one more time, but a small majority of the electorate was more afraid of leaving #43 in unchecked power than they were of the "San Francisco-Liberal", "Tax & Spend", "Soft on Terrorism" Democrats.

 

The "fight" is not over, except for those who realize that "fighting" gets us nowhere.  The Democrats should run Jackie DeShannon and their theme song should be, "Put A Little Love in Your Heart".  On the other hand, wasn't she British, thus ineligible for the presidency?  While you are reading the rest of this article, let us all think of an American woman for whom we would vote in a presidential election.  OK?  You will find my choice at the end of this diatribe, but no fair peeking.  You have to think of at least one of your own.

 

The only problem, if there is one, is that we never seem to get (back) to the future.  By the time that we all have heated & cooled cup holders in a car that can parallel-park itself (comfort and practicality, all in one package); we laugh, shrug and simply accept it as normal.  If something transported you back to 1958 and visited the Auto Show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in LA, you would be impressed with such new technologies as "Power Steering", which was brought into play because automobiles were becoming as heavy as the hydraulically-control jet fighters that they were meant to emulate.  You may have noticed that SAAB has brought back their jet fighter lineage recently, proving that there is nothing new under the Sun.  

 

To continue our theme, do you remember the Rocket Oldsmobile?  You do not hear much about rockets anymore, unless they use 5000-year-old Chinese guidance technology, as fired by Hamas.  No hydraulic boost needed there!  Of course, do not forget the high-tech Israeli rockets that seem to reprogram themselves to take out apartment buildings full of (formerly) extended families in Gaza.  Is this the "Revenge of the Rockets" or perhaps the ultimate extension of the 1950s MidEast Crisis?

 

 

Do you recognize this "Old Friend"?  Yes, Sputnik is the one that started it all - the "Space Race in the 1950s" that is.  It is one of six spare Sputniks, left over after "bigger, better, more, longer, lower, wider" (kudos to GM for their last original concept) satellite technology took over.  We traded with the Russians (did we not call them the "Ruskies" in the old days?) for two Russian names to be placed in the Rocket Science Hall of Fame.  Ironically, she is not much bigger than the now infamous Michael Jordan-signed basketball that Madeline Albright supposedly bounce-passed to Kim Jong Il as an enticement for him to give up his nuclear arms if not his missile ambitions.  She (Sputnik, not Madeline) still looks good, after all these years.  Is anyone out there old enough to remember the fear that she (Sputnik) struck in the hearts of Americans?  We dreamed about stainless steel basketballs falling on us from the sky.  It was scary enough to have millions of us school kids doing drop & cover drills.  Be sure to cover your eyes so that you won't be "blinded by the light" as you are vaporized.

 

For whatever reason, I did not take any pictures of the bent/spent, rusty/trusty German V-2 Rocket engine that they had dug up out of the White Sands of New Mexico, but you would be amazed to see its gyro-controlled, vectored-thrust, multi-nozzle rocket engine.  This is not bad for 1938 "technology".  You gotta love the German sense of style, in those days.  Their WW-II (The Big One) combat helmets became the stylistic prototype for Darth Vader's "hat" in Star Wars (Episodes 1, 3, 5, 7 & 9, but not 2, 4, 6 & 8, where he sported a French Beret).  Sorry, I did not mean to bring up the French.  For those who are still hoping we find WMDs in Iraq, I know it is a sore subject.

 

 

The Lockheed X7A Ramjet test-bed pictured here was recyclable, unlike the multi-billion dollar single-use rockets we continue using to build Ronald Reagan's International Space Station.  Is anyone out there old enough to remember Ronald Reagan?  Let us talk about the subject of "Make Work".  One re-supply mission to the aging boondoggle "Space Station" probably costs more than Hoover Dam and the Lend-Lease of the Marshall Plan, put together.  Those references are for you WW-II fans, who find it odd that we could beat the real Axis Powers in about four years, but cannot remember exactly who the "Axis of Evil" includes...  Let us see; would that be North Korea, Iran...  Darfur? Afghanistan?, Nicaragua?, Venezuela?, Syriana?

 

Back to our yellow and black rocket:  After exhausting its fuel, this little jewel would parachute down and the spike on the nose would act like a dart, penetrating the sand, leaving the missile intact, to fly another day.  For those of us who grew up in Burbank, the name "Lockheed" on the tail makes for a wistful sigh(t).  For fans of jet fighter technology, our little yellow "bumblebee" seems to have the wings and tail of an F-104 Starfighter designed and built by Lockheed.  During the 1960's and early 1970's, the F-104 was our main defense against "The Red Menace".  NATO pilots, many of whom were Germans (didn't they used to be the enemy?) called it a "manned rocket".  Now we know why.

 

 

From the Saturn-V Moon-rocket motor on the right (note the full-sized adult next to it), to the early Nike Missile, shown in elevated (firing) position.  Later, the design morphed into the Japanese whale harpoon, used to blast the ocean's whales into submission and near extinction in what they called a 'fair fight'... the blubbering whales being reduced to a bumper-sticker-defense, as in "Nuke the Unborn Gay Whales"), to the forward-theater, nuclear-capable missile on the right (deployed in "Western" Germany, with red-blooded Americans ready to fire us all into Armageddon, if we so much as lost a single foot race in a USA/USSR dual track meet).  We can see how enamored of missile technology we really were in the 50's & 60's.  It makes you wonder how we made it out of "that life" alive.

 

 

I shot all these pictures at the Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, NM.  It is a mere thirty miles from the "Trinity Site", named for "ground zero" of the world's first nuclear blast, which occurred there in 1945. That event caused many witnesses to see "The Father, The Son and an image of their own Holy Ghost" rising to heaven on a mushroom cloud.  All of that aside, you can imagine how shocked I was to look out the window, only to see this ancient rocket achieving lift-off from what was supposed to be a static display area.  I caught this one-of-a-kind, ground-shaking event on camera, for you to see.

 

Meanwhile, back here on Mother Earth, and especially in Iran and North Korea, what will the "real future" bring?  (After six years with #43 as president, can you say, "Bring 'em on" with a straight face?) 

 

As Doris Day so aptly sang, "Que Sera, Sera...  What will be, will be.  The future's not ours to see.  Que sera, sera".  For you Arizona residents, please pardon the use of the Spanish language.  As of the time of this writing, your Official Language is English (the King's English?) and don't forget it.  However, back to Doris; any woman who can single-handedly land a DC-6 at San Francisco Airport on only two bounces has my vote for president (hometown girl Nancy Pelosi and New Yorker(?) Hillary Clinton, eat your hearts out).  With it being too late in the game to have Rock Hudson as her VP, is Tab Hunter still available for a draft as Doris' running mate?

 

 

As Gabby Hayes used to say, "Yep". 

 

 

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By James McGillis at 07:37 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link