If I hadn’t been down to Crescent Con down in New Orleans a couple weeks ago, then I would simply feel badly for the folks down in the Big Easy and keep my fingers crossed for them.
But instead, for me, the Big Breezy has a very personal aspect to it now. I met hundreds of great folks down there, and now I’m worried about all of them. I find myself wondering which of them got out in plenty of time…which ones were sitting there stuck in the unmoving mass of traffic. I remember the chatty cab driver who jovially pointed out the Superdome as the place where the Saints go to lose every weekend (if I got the team wrong, cut me some slack, I’m not Mr. Football), and now I wonder if the cabbie was one of those who couldn’t afford to get out and is now huddling in that same structure for which he showed such disdain. There’s a shop in the French Quarter that sells toy soldiers that Harlan loves, and I didn’t get a chance to swing by there and buy him something while I was down there; now I wonder if it’ll still be there by morning.
Katrina has been downgraded from a category 5 to category 4 which, according to a spokesman for the National Weather Service, is like being downgraded from being hit by an 18 wheeler to being hit by a freight train.
If any of the great folks I met down there are able to, chime in here and let us know how you’re doing.
PAD
• 
Hi Y’all,
Sorry, yes the sci.energy.hydrogen is a Usenet newsgroup. You need to either use google groups to read it, or get a newsreader such as outlook express or netscape’s newsreader to see it.
Basically, what you find is, that since there aren’t any hydrogen wells, we have to create any hydrogen using other energy. All the public ‘demonstrations’ of hydrogen use the main source we use presently – they strip the carbon off natural gas, and vent it into the atmosphere as CO2 to get the hydrogen.
Since it takes more hydrogen to move a vehicle than it would if you just used the natural gas directly, you create a LOT more CO2 using hydrogen than necessary.
Also, if you have electricity from wind or solar, then just add it to the grid. Then, you get to offset the use of coal to generate electricity, and you are REALLY doing something to reduce pollution.
And the BS about using up the oxygen, Den was right. The electrolysis process frees up oxygen. And if you are doing the reformation of natural gas thing, you are still just burning it, and the more CO2 we produce, the more the plants make oxygen. Kinda nice feature, that… 😎
Charlie
Charlie, just to be a nit-picker, we don’t create hydrogen, we extract it. And whatever extraction process we use, there’s going to be a net loss of energy.
The process I’ve seen talked about the most is to use solar/wind electricity to separate the H out of the H20, and it’s just a matter of time before we can get the efficiency of that process down before we have useful and affordable fuel cells. Because the technology already exists. Fuel cells have been around for decades, but their cost has limited them to things like space exploration. It’s just getting the production costs down and energy outputs up to the point where we can put them in cars that don’t cost $100,000.
http://www.nbc10.com/news/4943604/detail.html
You gotta love these people….
“After a tour of the Houston Astrodome in Texas earlier this week, where thousands of hurricane victims are being housed, Barbara Bush said in a National Public Radio interview: “So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”
Frank,
I’m right there with you. Where’d you shop, by the way?
Well, Charlie, any demonstrations are just that, demonastrations. If anyone were to build a large-scale hyrdrogen fuel production, they would extract it from water, not natural gas, because water is cheaper, more abundant, and doesn’t emit CO2.
The real hurdle, however, remains getting the energy for electrolysis. Until that problem is solved, hydrogen will remain only a theoretical source of energy.
I agree with that, but you’re not quite answering the situation I addressed. You’re discussing a proposal that causes disruption AND doesn’t solve the problem, whereas I was discussing the OR option. Significant different, in my opinion.
Tim, first off, great post.
Well, with the or position, if the proposal doesn’t do anything it’s just another wasted law that will probably do little more than reinforce the notion that environmentalists are out of touch with reality.
And if it causes people to feel that their lives are being seriously diminished it won’t be passed.
Now if you could PROVE that draconian measures would have long term tangible results…but that is very unlikely. While the vast majority of scientists recognize global warming as a likely reality there is considerable less agreement on the amount due to human activity and how much benefit there can be gained by realistic restrictions on that activity.
We are somewhat caught in a Catch-22 here. We all recognize that overpopulation is a serious problem but the only way to get a culture to stop having too many children is to increase its affluence. Which makes it more like the USA which makes it more likely to produce greenhouse gasses. Africa probably produces very few of the gasses but is an ecological catastrophe. the only hope of saving most of the biodiversity of the African savannah or the tropical rainforests is to make the people of those lands well off enough that they don’t need to hunt bushmeat and burn down acres of forest. But doing that requires the kind of technological economy that also pumps out CO2. So…
I don’t know what the solution is but it must be acceptable to the general population. If it costs too many jobs they will simply elect politicians that deny there is any problem at all.
Well this is all kinds of fûçkëd up:
“I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a “ticket.” Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn’t believe these people were afraid they’d be charged for a rescue.” (CNN)
For folks looking for a timeline on who did what (or SAID they did what), here are two sources:
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrina-response-timeline/
http://www.thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline
Another thing that catches my eye. In talking about the power struggle between the Feds and Louisiana before Katrina hit–
“”We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water,” said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. “They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart.”
Hm, if the local folks are supposed to be the front line first responders, wouldn’t it help if the federal government gave up the resources to the locals so they could do an effective job and leave less for FEMA to do? Or am I off base here?
“Hm, if the local folks are supposed to be the front line first responders, wouldn’t it help if the federal government gave up the resources to the locals so they could do an effective job and leave less for FEMA to do? Or am I off base here?”
This ties into my latest thoughts. What is Homeland Security’s function? Why are taxpayers funding an agency that seems to have it’s primary logical function delegated to the states? Is this another example like No Child Left Behind, only worse, a program that has a management stream funded by Federal tax dollars, but the field level responsibilities are foisted off to the states, without any funding?
Good point…
My thought was that, in the hours before the hurricane struck, WHY THE HÊLL ARE YOU “NEGOTIATING” ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL CHARTS???? If you wanna play power games, this was something that should have been taken care of BEFORE the fecal matter hit the fan, not when time is of the essence.
And given all the other crap FEMA pulled off (diverting local supplies without checking with local authorities, mandating volunteer rescue workers go through a half day sexual harassment seminar before getting them to the site, putting out flyers uring victims to call a 800 number or go to a website for “immediate” help, and using trained rescue workers to hand out those flyers), it’s obvious to me that both FEMA and Homeland Security have been a titanic waste of tax dollars.
Why were they futzing around with about org charts? Simple, THAT WAS WHERE THE PROBLEMS WERE!
Much of what I have heard has been “We were ready to go in, but we didn’t get the ‘GO’ order to move…” Since they didn’t have any co-ordinated organization, most of the help outside of the city was paralyzed. And inside the city, each little group was doing what it could, but there was no way to get needed help when it was more than a local organization’s ability, like the convention center and Superdome rapidly outstripping the limited resources that were there, or the busses left to drown…
It is never a bad thing to set up organization. It is a bad thing to just say “Go Help” and then not tell you “Help here…”
Charlie
When was DHS created? 2001? In 4 years’ time, they haven’t been able to come up with a pre-approved Emergency Response Authority org chart?
That’s a level of incompetence that would get lots and lots of people fired in a business. When it’s a government organization, using taxpayer money, it becomes a criminal waste of public resources.
Why were they futzing around with about org charts? Simple, THAT WAS WHERE THE PROBLEMS WERE!
No. That’s dead wrong.
If the mantra was that local authorities were the ones responsibile, THEN GET THEM RESOURCES BEFORE THE TROUBLE HIT. And if there’s a question on procedures, DO IT BEFORE THERE’S TROUBLE. Raising questions when a hurricane is bearing down is the wrong time to do it.
Moreover, there’s a very good chance that playing these power games before Katrina hit is what caused the organizational problems in the first place, as FEMA did NOT respect the authority of the locals, who supposedly knew where to go, and did not supply resouces and communication equipment that were needed by local authorities.
The people that live in that city must feel like they can’t win.
Some of them are moved to Texas and then Rita comes along and chases them there. Plus, I just saw the morning news showing an area that was finally dry in NO that is now roof high in water again. They just got to where they could start to repair and rebuild and then, pow, they again look like they did back on day three of Katrina.
Man, that’s messed up.