The ugly sister

Gustav no longer the "mother of all storms," just the ugly sister. That according to the Mayor of N.O.

The storm surge topped the dykes, but didn't significantly breach them or flow over. Just. A hair's breadth in some cases. Kudos to the engineers who got them repaired and to a good evacuation plan. We were also extremely lucky. But there'll be another, and another, hurricane coming.

The person who summed up my incredulity that we still refuse to learn climate lessons the most, was the woman who said on the radio how "angry" residents were to have to suffer another storm so hard on the heels of Katrina.

Getting angry at Mother Nature for doing what she's gonna do. Intelligent, that.

Imagine if New Englanders, instead of having food, fuel, water in their houses, as well as generators and plow trucks, and watching the weather all winter, got angry at ice and snow storms. Another blizzard? That just makes me mad. We're so angry to live in New England and have these awful, awful...

...winters.

The expectation seems to be that the frequency of hurricanes is something that the authorities could fix, if they wanted. Outstanding.

Another reason why climate and climate change education needs to be mandatory and in the high schools as well as colleges. But at least FEMA, the city, and the state have learned some. Not enough to be completely safe. They obviously shaved some on the pace and cost of levee repair, or it wouldn't have been such a close-run thing. Apparently one Dutch commentator, a levee expert, mentioned that there's thirty years of work needed to save that city. But they definitely brooked no backtalk and got all the people out, and that was smart.

Thirty years in which the sea level rise will very likely accelerate due to the general melt in Greenland and Antarctica.