Then the mayor started sending out tweets about repositioning furniture, the Mayweather-McGregor fight, and a little break in the rain after 3 inches.
Streiff gets uncomfortably real at this point:
Just putting this out there as something that will bring clarity to all the after-the-fact discussion.There is no nice way of putting this. Houston in a Democrat stronghold and the urge to make Greg Abbott look like an idiot was just too big of a temptation to resist. Perhaps the fiasco of the Hurricane Rita evacuation caused the leadership in Houston to miscalculate. Even so, there was no defensible reason for the mayor and his minion to go public and contradict some very sound advice and put lives at risk, both of citizens who did not evacuate and of first responders who will be called upon to try and rescue them. There were all sorts of options available to the Houston mayor short of pooh-poohing the imminent arrival of a major storm. For instance, he could have agreed with Abbott and emphasized that there was no evacuation order or he could have ordered the mandatory evacuation of areas that were known to be vulnerable to flooding.Will there be consequences for this? Probably not. Democrats don’t vote Democrats out of office for corruption and incompetence. Take a look at any major US city you wish if you desire evidence.What is predictable is that by Tuesday, the Houston mayor will be slamming state and federal response to the disaster and no one in the media is going to look twice at how the catastrophe happened.
It is hard to calculate loss during an event, I doubt party affiliation's should be given much credence at such times. Now is Fema one of those pesky less valued associations determining assistance. Sadly this is considered political.
ReplyDeleteFEMA and NFIP are definitely political. Actually, the folks at SwissRe who bloggie cited in another thread a few months back as charging rates based on what the market will bear (conservative retaliation over Swiss Re's conclusion that climate change is a huge ongoing concern) claims this ain't that much of a biggie when it comes to insured losses. Also, Katrina became hugely political. But if you want this crap lingering till it's long past odiferous, look to the courts. This will be every bit as political as that scientific debate on climate change has become. The truth will be found somewhere, but I, for one, have the humility to look. Me Alone!!!
ReplyDeleteHannover Re, one of the world's largest reinsurers, said that insured losses for Katrina in 2005 were around $80 billion, while losses for Sandy in 2012 were $36 billion.
"We are far from Katrina and Sandy in magnitude in the case of Hurricane Harvey," a spokeswoman for the company said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hurricane-harvey-damages-well-below-those-of-katrina-sandy-hannover-re-says/ar-AAqPgnG?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=SL5JDHP
I dunno, but what I'm hearing is that there is only one evacuation route out of Houston and a million or more cars on it leaving for a very swiftly developing storm was quite the other catastrophe in the making so thank you for waxing political with your accusations so early in the game though you claim that's the exclusive realm of the dastardly Dems. Rush was heard today about all the clueless helpless victims who have been reared on the gummit tit and will now call for aid. Damn scroungers!
ReplyDeleteAnd I heard Mark Levine raging against the despicables who allude to climate change. Well, who knew? Another unprecedented catastrophic event is obviously gonna bring out the clueless, right? And I thought Stanford had a sterling reputation. Hey, it's even a private institution (having to compete with those even more dastardly public institutions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/hurricane-harvey-global-warming.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
Although seas have risen and warmed, and the atmosphere now holds more moisture, we can’t yet draw definitive conclusions about the influence of climate change on Hurricane Harvey. Hurricanes are complex events, and the role of historical warming in their development continues to be studied. But it is well established that global warming is already influencing many kinds of extremes, both in the United States and around the world, and it is critical to acknowledge this reality as we prepare for the future.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, recent research shows that weather that falls outside of our historical experience is becoming more likely. For example, my colleagues and I recently found that global warming has already increased the odds of record-setting heat waves across more than 80 percent of the planet where we have reliable observations, and influenced record-setting wet and dry events across half that area.
Ibid, Noah S. Diffenbaugh is a professor of earth system science at Stanford.
Guess bloggie's done here, onto some other gripe.
ReplyDeleteI've told you repeatedly I don't engage in climate "science" pissing matches.
ReplyDeleteI know, because for YOU, the matter is already settled and there simply is no climate change. Love the science in quotes. What a bumpkin!
ReplyDelete