Katrina

The best way to lessen the emotional impact of lives disrupted by Hurricane Katrina is to analyze the hurricane with scientific emotionless dispatch.

The warm water over the ocean is giving strength to the hurricane. I hope that the great cyclone will bring enough of the cold upper atmosphere to cool the water down. If not, then more hurricanes stronger than usual will be formed as a result of the earth trying to expend some excess heat.

People understand that ocean warming is due to the increasing level of carbon dioxide. Since the industrial revolution brought about the use of oil, the ocean has served as an enormous sink for dissolved carbon dioxide.

The equation H20 + CO2 <---> H2CO3 describes how carbon dioxide is dissolved in water to form a carbonic acid. H2CO3 is relatively unstable and will give up a hydrogen ion easily, increasing the acidity of the ocean that in turn damages some corals and reefs that depend on a stability of the ocean pH. There might have been an attempt to address this problem in the Presidency of G8 in 2005.

Let us have a corny song:

That these compounds fractured to compounds strange
Should bid all worldly life to rearrange
Has made me feel the sorrows of the sea,
To witness great abuse in apogee
Of fossil fuel. Our conservation lax
Has led New Orleaners to hide in shacks.
There's still a choice, each American do,
Share resource sustainably, I and you.
Switch to renewables and organic food,
Despite the higher cost of organic goods,
You make an investment against the costs
Of hurricanes, weather-related loss.
And let us try to do our part the triple Rs.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle, it's not that hard.

Inconvenient, yes, though apathy is worse. Environment changing beyond our control is worse still. The best defense is education, studying city-planning to help make sustainable towns.