Jimmy Carter: Longstanding disaster threats can't be ignored

[boise1]

By Jimmy Carter
Thu Sep 8, 6:37 AM ET

Ten days after it was known that an extraordinary storm was approaching the Gulf Coast, the ravages of the hurricane and the human suffering have still not been adequately addressed. This is not a time for partisan recriminations, because the clear threats to New Orleans have been recognized and analyzed for decades, and no adequate preventive or corrective action has been planned or funded.
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In 1989, John McPhee described in The Control of Nature a threat to the Mississippi delta if/when one of the key upriver containment devices is ruptured by floodwaters, especially one that controls flow into the Atchafalaya River.

The most definitive warning I've read about the consequences of a hurricane striking New Orleans was written by Mark Fischetti in Scientific American in 2001. He describes the potentially disastrous channeling of the Mississippi River flow well out into the gulf, which robs silt from the coastal flood plains and the protective offshore barrier reefs. He also predicts with horrifying prescience the vast waters of the gulf and Lake Pontchartrain pouring into the city through dikes ruptured by storm surges.

These longstanding warnings have been ignored or met with a halfhearted response. Instead of dissipating, the dangers have been exacerbated by global warming. The first warnings came in 1979 while I was president, when top American scientists expressed concern about global warming. Now we know their warnings are coming true, with a notable increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes, the melting of mountain glaciers and ice in the polar regions and a rise in the level of the seas.

[CottonBear]

1. Jimmy Carter: one our our greatest Americans EVER. n/t

[bemildred]

2. The last decent President this nation had.

And little help he got from the corrupt swine in Congress.