The Key Word In "Unforseen Catastrophe" Is "Unforseen"

We have the ability to control and plan for so many little things that I think it has lulled us into a false sense of security and omnipotence. We can fix any problem. We can overcome any obstacle.

But there are some things that are bigger than us. We're mostly a nation of juveniles, though, so we need someone to blame, some one to be responsible, when there is often no way that is humanly possible to prevent death, disease, or destruction of property.

The only way to save all the lives in New Orleans was to have had them begin evacuating ten days ago. But that's not going to happen the next time down there, or for that matter in any other major city in the country.

Georgia is on a fault line. There hasn't been a real big earthquake in a long, long time here. But scientists are calling for another one to hit sometime soon. A year or so ago, we had a small tremor, which for people who live in earthquake land, usually signals that more are coming.

Have we dug up our natural gas pipelines and replaced them with flexible pipes? Have we buried all of our powerlines to prevent falling trees from interrupting power? Are our homes built to earthquake proof standards? What about our tall buildings? Have we stockpiled food and water as individuals?

Nope.

Are we stupid for not planning ahead for this?

How much can you spend to prevent a catastrophe before the expenditure itself becomes a financial disaster?

You could build the entire city on an elevated platform that raises it twenty feet above sealevel, in hurricane proof buildings with leakproof roofs and redundant emergency power systems today...

...if money was no object, time was not a factor, and there was no intrinsic sense of historical value to consider.

South Carolina was hit by Hurricane Hugo years ago. Wiped out a bunch of homes that were poorly built. Obliterated a legion of mobile homes from the coast up to the Lowcountry.

The trees are still gone in many areas, but the building codes haven't changed, and the mobile home dealers sell more units than ever.

When freedom of choice intersects with an overabundance of caution, the urge to remain unfettered usually wins out here in the US.

I would actually go so far as to posit that if you could guarantee someone a healthful, disease free, disaster free life, with a "do not return to maker until 75 years of age" stamp on their ass if they would confine themselves to the grounds of...let's say the buildings and grounds of the Pentagon, which is a pretty big place, for their entire lives, to work and live under a sort of military junta...I bet they would choose to take the risk of not making it, of not being healthful, of not being disease free, in order to do what they wanted to do.

Its in our blood. We'll do it our way if it kills us. And it frequently does.

I wrote the paragraphs above five years ago after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, back when the only people who read what I wrote were in my online writing group. We argued a lot about what should have happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina back then the same way the nation's media is arguing over what should be happening during the BP oil spill every night on my TV.

I would imagine that I could repost the same piece five years from now, when the next unforseen catastrophe hits, and it would be just as relevant.

We are a nation of forensic experts, with an ability to assign blame and liability in small increments to a multitude of parties in multiple jurisdictions, but the past cannot be changed. What is is.

When I am in the middle of a self-made mess, I do not spend very much time worrying about how it happened - I spend 99% of my time trying to figure out what I am going to do going forward.

Our media wastrels, by contrast, are spending 99% of their time looking for someone to blame, even though the probability for any of the solutions proffered thus far have all come with caveats like "this is a highly risking maneuver" or "we've never done this before under these conditions."

Maybe we need to send our Know Everything, Do Nothing media stars to the Gulf and stick their asses in some clean-up suits for twelve hours a day for the next six months. Or put them in an operations center with a phone and a clipboard and put them to work coordinating response efforts until the last marsh has been flushed out with water from the Mississippi.

I have howled like a dog on this blog and the other venues where I write for the past few weeks about the things that were not being done, so it has been a pleasant surprise to see many of the things I suggested - an escrow account for damages and a measuring device at the leak to more accurately detect what flow rate is, among other things I've been adamant about - so I have to believe that they are listening to some of us here in the blogosphere.

I am glad the White House is trying to bypass the media as much as possible. The Fourth Estate squandered what little credibility it had long ago, and now have been reduced to playing cheerleader for their favorite causes.

 

Gulf Geyser : A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters

[Sometimes I run across original research, original analysis, or hard-to-get information that is exactly the kind of stuff I live for - well thought out, well written, well researched commentary, the kind that your media experts get by the pound but think is too much for you to understand. Mark Sumner is the author of "Gulf Geyser: A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters", as well as the author of the nonfiction work "The Evolution of Everything" and several novels including "Devil's Tower." He has given me permission to publish his comments here. Enjoy]


Gulf Geyser: A Quick Reference Sheet For Reporters


Look, guys, I'm starting to worry about the environmental impact of this trash pile growing at my side -- the one made from shredded newspapers and crushed radios. It expands every time I hear impossibly silly and ill-prepared comments and questions in a story about the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf. Frankly, I might soon have to start measuring the size of the pile in states. The only way to reduce the flow may be for you to print this out (sorry trees) and keep it by your side when you're dealing with these issues. This will also help sustain the sanity of your audience and reduce our trade imbalance with Japan China whoever makes cheap radios these days.


It is possible to estimate how much oil is being lost into the Gulf.


The idea that it's impossible to make a good estimate of how much oil is pouring into the Gulf is straight up bullshit. Calculating the amount of oil is a simple matter of looking at the size of the openings and rate at which material is being ejected. Regular video footage of the flow sites would allow for highly accurate estimates of the loss. And BP has that video footage. They just aren't sharing enough to make good estmates. Why not? Because they are well aware that the rate of loss is much, much higher than the 5,000 barrels a day number that you keep repeating. The rate of flow was 5,000 BPD, but that was only a couple of days after the accident -- in other words, three weeks ago -- and the flow increased rapidly over the initial week. The current rate is somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 barrels a day, based on what's been seen at the surface. Which number is more accurate? I'd know if you'd get BP to release those videos instead of meekly accepting "we don't know" as an answer.


If no one will give you an estimate of the loss, they can't give you an estimate of the capture.


In the same interviews where you're reporting that there's no estimate of how much oil is being lost, you're willing to report that BP is capturing "50%" or even "up to 90%" of the oil with the 4" soda straw they jabbed into the pipe. Um, no. No, they're not. BP is capturing (if we accept their numbers) around 1,000 barrels a day. That's only 20% of what was being lost three weeks ago, and it's 3% (or less) of what's been flowing out for the last two weeks. But the more important part of this is why in holy hell would you accept this number from a company that just told you they couldn't make an estimate of the loss? Look, I just poured this bag of M & Ms on the floor. How many? I don't know. I'm not even going to look, but I think this one I just picked up is half of them -- though I won't let you check me. Don't be that stupid, it's the number one cause of radio smashage.


We don't get 30% of our oil from the Gulf. 


Gulf oil accounted for about one and a half million BPD last year. That's deep water, shallow water, old wells and those just brought on line. Sounds like a lot, huh? But the US consumed twenty million BPD. Gulf oil was less than 10% of our oil supply. Yes, it's around a 1/3 of our domestic oil supply, but our domestic number has been shrinking since 1970, and that's including pretty well the whole period of Gulf exploration. The idea that more drilling in the Gulf will have an impact on our oil imports is, what's that word again... yeah, bullshit. Please stop passively sitting there when someone tells you that expanded offshore drilling is needed to secure our oil supply, because it's simply not true. Our oil supply can't be secured because the majority comes from overseas, and it will stay that way as long as we need oil.


Shutting down deep water drilling, or even all offshore drilling, will have no immediate effect on the price of oil.

Not only is Gulf oil production only 10% of US consumption, that's production not drilling. It can take years for an area to go from exploration to producing wells. The impact of shutting down drilling on price of gas at the pump... hmm, let's see. Oil is $72 a barrel. Three weeks ago, when a blanket suspension of new drilling was announced oil was selling for over $80 a barrel. Looks like stopping drilling in the Gulf saved us $8 a barrel! No. The relationship between current drilling and the price of oil is neglible. Anyone telling you what oil would cost without offshore drilling is bullshitting you. Why not call them on it for once?
Not drilling in the Gulf would not result in $14 a gallon gasoline.
This is a Mitch McConnell special, one which so many programs seem happy to repeat without comment. The truth is (as we just saw) the immediate effect of decreased drilling on oil prices is unpredictable. The oil market has way, way, way too many variables for anyone to reach into their hat and predict the long term effects of any action. And for someone to give you an actual number, like $14 a gallon for gas, means that they have pulled this number completely out of their ass. Say, why not call them on it? For once.


Oil does not make electricity.

Oil is used for transportation. It doesn't compete with coal, or with wind, or with nuclear power. All those new windmills off the coast of MA are peachy, but they won't save one gallon of gas. If all the oil wells dried up today, it wouldn't affect the ability to run our iPads, or to air condition our homes into the subarctic, or listen to you blather. Oil is not electricity. Get it? I don't care if the person trying to add a rosy "we're building windmills!" into a conversation about oil is the president of BP or President Obama, the two things are unrelated. This disaster is not a reason we need to reevaluate our need for nuclear power, because nuclear power doesn't compete with oil. Coal, wind, solar, nukes = electricity. Oil = transportation. Get it? There's nothing at all wrong with adding more wind and solar to the mix, they just don't do a damn thing to decrease the need for oil. What would decrease that oil demand? More public transit, fewer long haul trucks and more trains, smaller cars that use less gas, and (finally) cars that get their go from electricity. When we have a significant number of the later on the roads, maybe oil and those other sources will actually overlap. Until then, stop talking about other sources of energy like they have anything to do with oil. Please. Special bonus nugget: the reason we don't make electricity from oil? Because oil is more expensive than coal or natural gas. This is also the reason that Iran wants nuclear plants. Asking Iran why they won't just burn their valuable export commodity to keep the lights on is like asking South Africa why it doesn't just build streets out of diamonds.


Your job is to find out these things.

You're not supposed to have on one person from the American Petroleum Institute and one guy who just wrote the "Why Green Energy Sucks Handbook" and repeat what they say. Your job is to learn the facts of the situation and relay them to the public. Adding someone from the American Wetlands Lovers Council to your conversation is not a substitute for doing some research. Believe it or not, there are facts. You're supposed to let your readers / listeners / viewers know the truth, not just smile and look back and forth like the referee at a ping pong tourney. Feel free to extend this tip to other situations.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Sumner is the author of 32 novels, including one called "Devil's Tower" (and for the record, the book title and the screen name are from fond memories of visits to the national monument of that name. They do not show an inclination toward the "dark side."). He's a past winner of Writers of the Future, and has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.

Baracksploitation Is In Full Effect

Baracksploitation is in full effect, and I'm not talking about the vendors in Washington who are selling Obama memorabilia. The major networks and cable news outlets are working overtime to manufacture one Obama story after another.

As I watched commentators on every channel stare expectantly into the camera and mouth the words "first African American president" over and over last night, I thought about those little brown children all across the south in the fifties who were the first black students to integrate their local school systems, eyes from around the country trained on each and every step they took.

The nervous tension inherent in these final moments before the swearing-in ceremony, like the heightened level of anxiety you see conveyed in the faces of practically every anchor person on every channel right now, doesn't stem from Barack Obama's history making quest, but from those who have been complicit in its denial until now. It is as if the network brass have decided to make their on camera personalities sell a product whose capabilities they aren't quite sure of yet themselves.

Journalists like Soledad O’Brien, who have traded on their “maybe I’m white, maybe I’m not” brand of racial ambiguity all their lives, are almost giddy with excitement because they don’t feel like they are on the outside looking in – being able to publicly appropriate the dark roots they have downplayed all their lives looks almost liberating as I observe the extra sense of knowingness in their faces.

And for the masses of my brownskinned brethren who have never been mistaken for being anything other than African American, whose omnipresence on every stretch of space in downtown D.C. has transformed the atmosphere of the nation’s capitol into that of a family reunion, there is no part of the Barack Obama story that doesn’t deserve to be blown up to larger than life proportions.

The thing that all this attention has done is force the mainstream media to focus on the darker part of our nation's history in a way that they never have before. Listening to the news announcers in prime time talk about the historical significance of the slave labor that was essential in constructing the nation's capital, including the White House itself, it sounded to me like they were practically wading through the pages of our history books, elbowing the accepted narrative aside to finally make room for the entire truth of our country's complete heritage.

I don't see a thing wrong with this kind of Baracksploitation if it will continue to help expose America to the whole truth of its past, and connect this past to the imperfect reality of today that those odious legacies spawned.

Obama, America, and Race

There are times when I wish Barack Obama could take off his white hat and put a black one on for a while, the way Bruce Wayne does when becomes Batman, the Dark Knight. Then he could make his enemies the villains. Kick a little ass and take a few names.

Or, if he was so inclined, he could take a walk on the wild side, and get to do what the villains do.

There's nothing like wishful thinking, but it doesn't win presidential campaigns - so I don't expect to see Obama traipsing around in a cape and a mask in the middle of the night.

I don't know why the McCain campaign even waited - they should have cut the pretense and hauled out the tried but true "race card" strategy from the beginning. It could have saved them a lot of cash - they would have had free campaign advertising every night for the last six weeks. Between this and the pundits like Sean Hannity, who have an innate ability to work O.J. Simpson's name into any discussion of Obama, I will expect to see everybody from Mike Tyson to Mike Vick paraded across TV screens in the coming weeks.

Race is still the biggest problem America has, so it’s no surprise that we end up talking about it a lot. But it is hard to talk about abstract ideas when I am actually living them, and harder still to say those unpopular but true things that need to be said to accomplish anything worthwhile.

And it doesn’t help that the few thousand people in New York and LA who control and produce practically all of the media imagery we see, who as a group are more mentally (and racially) homogenized than the last gallon of milk you bought, have absolutely no qualms in meeting mainstream America's need to be titillated, shocked, or riveted by a constant parade of reverends, rappers, and reluctant campaigners.

The few black columnists and pundits out there often spout half baked theories, honing them in front of other learned blacks and professional brown nosers (pun intended), until they have convinced themselves that they have unearthed a gospel truth explaining the actions of the black masses.

From what I can see, Obama is doing exactly what all of us who were smart but wanted to be "in" did - never let them see you sweat. We all downplayed how hard things were, how much effort it took, how little sleep you'd had, because the people you were trying to appeal to didn't want to hear it.

To assume, because Obama doesn't constantly use racially tinged rhetoric, that he can somehow "escape" how he looks, and how Americans are prone to feel about someone who looks like him, is one of the most ridiculous propositions our friends in TV land have debated for the last few months.

So far, Obama's been able to turn the good fortune smiling upon him into opportunity because he seems to be a guy who has always done his homework beforehand. But despite all of his campaign's careful planning and preparation, he will have to struggle with the racial consciousness of those Americans who used to blindly vote for the Democrat on the ticket all the way to the ballot box.

Senator McCain's campaign will make sure of it.

Secret Black Frequency

Is there a secret black frequency I must tune into when I see other black people in mixed settings? Like Barack Obama, I seem to be getting this African American thing wrong lately, as if a few pages of our "Keeping It Real" handbooks are stuck together.

S. and I sat in a restaurant a week or so ago with some friends of ours, ex-neighbors we’ve known for over ten years. We were in the middle of catching up on who was doing what in our old subdivision when a black woman approached our table.

The friends of ours were white, two northern transplants from Pennsylvania and New Jersey whose sensibilities had clicked with our small town Southern and Midwestern selves long ago. The female interloper was black, like S. and I.

"Don’t I know you from somewhere?" the woman said, looking directly at S.

S. turned and looked more closely at the woman. "I think it was at a party – it might have been a party at our house. Yeah, that’s it, don’t you remember her?" S. said to me.

I raised my eyebrows towards our friends, who had been in the middle of an animated discussion about a wedding they were going to attend the next day, and then peered at the woman.

"No, not really."

The woman stood there anyway, as if there was some kind of magnetic force emanating from the end of our table, continuing a line of patter across my back with S. about the mutual friend they shared.

S. went on for a few seconds, while I smiled at our friends, who were waiting patiently to get back to their story. S.’s tone began to change, becoming more distant with each word as she attempted to signal to the woman with the pitch of her voice and her clipped responses that this exchange needed to come to a close.

The woman kept talking, probing with each word for a sign of solidarity, a sign that we still remembered where we came from. There was something extra in her gaze that seemed to penetrate a little more deeply when she looked at us than we she glanced at our friends. It was the same something implied in the way she paused after certain words she said, as if we were Navajo code talkers, speaking an indecipherable language at a frequency level only black people could hear.

Our friends kept smiling, their eyes darting in the woman’s direction every few seconds, until S. was forced to introduce the woman to our friends.

We practically had to shoo the woman away from the table.

For a few minutes after the woman left, there seemed to be a distance between us and our friends that had hadn’t been there when we had arrived at the restaurant. It slowly dissipated, disappearing all together by the time our food arrived.

The friendship we have with our ex-neighbors is one born of proximity that has grown to a level of genuine fondness as we discovered over the years that we had the same sensibilities, the same types of college experiences, the same types of parents.

I understand all too clearly that there are things my brown middle class brethren who have self segregated themselves will have to overcome in order to have these kind of friendships. "This is our moment", the Obama mantra that sends audiences into a frenzy whenever he utters these four words, speaks to more than the idea of electing America's first black president. To me, "this is our moment" also means that it is time for us as black Americans to reach out across our own personal boundaries and connect more fully with the larger world around us, like the Irish did, like the Italians did, like the Jews did, like the Asians are doing now.

This is one of the things about the Barack Obama phenomenon that the mainstream media culture hasn't picked up on yet. It still seems to be obsessed with the kind of tribal imagery more reminiscent of an old Tarzan movie - African drums speaking to each other across the plains in the middle of the night as the great white hunters sit fearfully by their campfire - than it is of reality. A ridiculous number of hours were devoted to deconstructing the "fist bump" that Barack gave his wife Michelle before his speech in Minnesota to claim the Democratic nomination, as if it were a signal for the rest of us black folks to start executing our secret plan to take over America.

S. and I know where we came from. We know who we are. Hanging out with black people exclusively isn't going to make us any blacker. Hanging out with white people all the time isn't going to make us any whiter. But even though I feel this way, I can understand the black woman's reluctance to acknowledge that our white friends could be just as important to us as she was. For me to get to the mindset I have today was a constant struggle against ingrained prejudices and a fear of the unknown. To this woman, and to others like her, all I will say is this - the TV commercial promoting Southwest Airlines is absolutely right – "you are now free to move about the country".