Free Republic

As the hunt for new sources of domestic fuel intensifies in the face of dwindling world supplies, the energy industry has been quietly lobbying the state to open hundreds of thousands of acres in Lake Pontchartrain to drilling. The lake has been off limits to fuel producers since 1991, when the State Mineral Board first voted to ban drilling amid concerns about the lake's fragile ecosystem. The board, which controls drilling on state property, renewed the ban periodically until passing a permanent moratorium in 2000. Although the energy industry opposed the measure from the start, the ban has not faced...

My engineering training kicked in when I saw the NASA photographs from space of New Orleans, and of the whole Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. There is an obvious solution to the New Orleans problem. The Dutch have already demonstrated it. Take New Orleans as the first and worst example. The pumps, levees and canals intended to protect New Orleans have been controlled by local authorities. They left three of the four pumping stations dependent on the local power grid. Hellooo. The precise time those pumps are most needed is during a storm when the local power grid...

NEW ORLEANS - The historic city of New Orleans was steadily filling with water from nearby Lake Ponchartrain today after its defenses were breached by the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina. Water began rising in the streets this morning after a levee broke along a canal leading to Lake Pontchartrain, and many of the pumps relied upon by New Orleans -- built below sea level -- have failed. Officials planned to use helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach, but rising floodwaters were threatening the French Quarter, residents were plucked from the roofs of their homes, bodies were seen floating...

Therefore...the official forecast brings Katrina to 115 knots...or a category four on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. The GFDL is more aggressive and calls for 124 knots and 922 mb. The FSU superensemble is even more aggressive bringing Katrina to 131 knots. track info HERE