[A-List] Whitley Striber and Hurricane Katrina

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Last night around 2:30am, I woke up to take a piss. After returning to bed,
I turned on the radio as I often do to help put me back to sleep. As it
turned out, a discussion between Art Bell, a WABC talk show host, and
Whitley Strieber who is best known for his science fiction novels and for
his claim that he was abducted by space aliens, was in progress.

Although I consider Strieber a wack job, he was making some very good
points about the threat posed by Hurricane Katrina. He focused on two
questions, the failure of the government to adequately study the capability
of the levees meant to protect New Orleans from flooding; and the global
warming conditions that would explain recent super-storms. This is
something that is of long-standing interest to Strieber. He wrote a book
titled "The Coming Global Superstorm" (co-authored with Art Bell) that was
turned into "The Day After Tomorrow," the rather silly movie about global
warming. The movie showed, for example, Manhattan being inundated by 100
feet of water. Now it doesn't seem quite as silly.

Strieber has a website with articles about superstorms, space aliens, etc.
I suggest that you skip the space alien stuff. Although many of the
superstorm articles have a predictably lurid cast, they are most often
based on commentaries that appear elsewhere in authoritative journals.
Here's a sample:

Global Warming Really Here
31-Jul-2005

Melting Glacier
Despite what the government and car manufacturers would like you to
believe, the fact is that global warming is really here. One thing that
will slow down the Gulf Stream, the powerful ocean current that brings warm
water (and weather) to the UK and the rest of Europe, is dilution of the
ocean's salt level, due to an influx of freshwater from melting glaciers
and ice sheets. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts,which is keeping an eye on this phenomenon, says that large
regions of the North Atlantic Ocean have been growing fresher since the
late 1960s, due to melting glaciers and increased precipitation, both
associated with greenhouse warming. Salinity records show that large pulses
of extra sea ice and fresh water from the Arctic have flowed into the North
Atlantic.

In a recent paper published in Science magazine, Ruth Curry of Woods Hole,
along with Cecilie Mauritzen of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute,
figured out for the first exactly time how much additional fresh water has
flowed into the North Atlantic Ocean, how fast it entered the Atlantic
circulation, and where that fresh water was stored in frozen form in the past.

full: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4746

Yesterday I called some old married friends in Los Angeles. Since the
wife's mother lives in New Orleans, I wanted to find out how she was coping
with Hurricane Katrina. It turned out that she had refused to leave the
city and was holing up in the second floor of the brick apartment building
she lives in. There's not much chance that the building will be blown away
or anything like that, but I am genuinely concerned that the lack of
electricity and water will jeopardize her health. Without electricity,
there is no air-conditioning. How will she manage in New Orleans's
oppressive heat? Last summer, I was stuck without electricity and water for
a day and a half in my 13th floor apartment during the blackout that hit
the Northeast. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be subjected
to those conditions for a week, let alone the month or more that might
affect New Orleans.

Last night the news reported that oil commodity futures are being sold at
$70 per barrel since oil refineries are already being shut down in southern
Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. This, of course, fully expresses the
deadly logic of late capitalism and the looming environmental crisis. The
burning of petroleum has created the greenhouse gases that are warming the
atmosphere and the oceans. And global warming in turn jeopardizes the
orderly capital accumulation process. For some, industrialization and
technology are simply tools that are at the ready disposal of the
proletariat. If we throw out the bums that run Exxon, we can create a
socialist paradise with tract housing and SUV's for all.

The late Mark Jones, who graced the Marxism list and pen-l with his prickly
but sagacious presence, was a prophet of these sorts of developments and it
is sad that cancer robbed us of his ability to tie such things together.
Today's AM, a free newspaper that is handed out at subways, had a huge
banner headline, Katastrophe--a play on Katrina. It was tempting to see
Mark as a "Katastrophist" himself. He examined global warming, energy
depletion and war not as separate and distinct processes but as nexus of
related phenomena related to the particular needs of the capitalist system
in its most advanced but senescent stages. Although I tended to be lumped
with Mark as a fellow catastrophist, my emphasis was more on agriculture
and water which I saw as more immediately pressing matters. Now, I am not
so sure.


--

www.marxmail.org