It won't be this storm season that finishes NOLA off and it may not be the next. It may become impossible to sustain an urban population there as we have known it in the next 10 years though. Oil will continue to be pumped and levees will continue to be repaired until the precipitous end comes. As a world culture site, NOLA ranks with Holland, Venice and others as being in danger. As long as there is ice in the Artic and Antarctic to melt in our current cycle there is going to be rising waters on the world seacoasts. The contribution of industrial and internal combustion engine gases even if corrected now or in the next ten years will not prevent the inevitable erosion and retrenchment of the coasts. The long cycle processes of Polar precession, orbit distance from the sun, and deep mantle earth changes are going to combine in a dynamic that is not within the power of homo sapien sapien to directly control. The history of man has been one of advance, retrench, retreat, and adapt over generations. There have been periods when profound change was exhibited within one lifetime and there have been periods where change is less than obvious for generations. The disaster of the loss of coastal cities will appear to the next generation as precipitous and unexpected when the inevitability of such loss is only apparent to those with the long view.
If you live on the coast, as I do, click here.
