Sunday, December 6, 2009
Global Warming Debacle
1. The development and use of the Nuclear bomb and development of the Thermo-nuclear giant bomb, not to mention, Napalm, Nerve Gas and Biologic Death Agents. What were these giant minds of governmental research thinking? The largest bombs are capable of causing 3rd degree burns for a radius of 50 miles! Now it is only a matter of time before Terrorists get their hands on one or more.
2. NASA which has spent billions to put humans in space for no good scientific reason. Most of the really important discoveries of NASA are from unmanned robotic instruments and yet they continue to waste Research money and kill astronauts for no good Scientific reason. To make matters worse. Bert Rutan built a space plane system for a $10,000,000 contest and it worked as well as the space shuttle. He did it at a tiny fraction of the cost and in a tiny fraction of the time that NASA took to build the space shuttle.
3. The Center for Disease Control who cannot seem to understand the H1N1 epidemic and cannot figure out how to get vaccines and distribute them efficiently. The amount of conflicting information coming from this agency is mind boggling.
4. The Corps of Engineers has a long record ot monkeying with Rivers and Coastlines and failing spectacularly. The Tombigbee River, The failure of Levees in New Orleans and elsewhere, the $300,000,000 a year bill for replacing sand eroded from rich peoples beaches, and on and on.......
5. The numerous "scientific" projects that appear on website of the humorous and onerous uses of taxpayer moneys.
6. The billions in Research to see why fish and game are disappearing. Are we still a hunter-gatherer society? Fishing and Hunting are recreational and therefore should be supported by private funding rather than the taxpayer. Ducks Unlimited is a good model. Professional Fishing needs to stand on its own financially. If they insist on fishing the species to extinction, then it is their problem, not the tax payers.
7. Global Warming Solutions are in the realm of fairy tale. The solutions being offered are so preposterous that they are hardly worthy of response. If the Gores of the World are correct, that CO2 produced by man is the primary cause, then the only solution is to cause a massive reduction in population. Trading CO2 credits on stock exchanges will certainly not produce this result. It is becoming clear to me that, for many Scientists, this is seen as a code word for the actual problem which is overpopulation and an out of control rate of human reproduction , especially among the poor. By destroying the Capitalist economies via Kyoto and Copenhagen, are they actually aiming for mass starvation of the poor?
8. Ethanol as a "green" gasoline. Never mind the fact that both gasoline and natural gas are required to grow the crops and that Ethanol cannot be transported using gasoline infrastructure and that food prices are forced upwards due to the competition with energy for the use of the crops.
9. Florescent bulbs as Energy savior. Never mind the fact that this will make mercury poisoning of the environment rampant
10. Electric cars as the Energy savior. Never mind the cost and pollution of electricity production and never mind the Lead and Lithium poisoning of our environment. By the way, the Chinese now own virtually the Lithium mines in the world.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Soil & Rock Physical Parameters and Levee Design
EXAMPLE FROM THE LITERATURE
The Corps of Engineers Soil Strength Analysis taken from the Independent Analysis headed by Dr. Seed is below. The analysis and decisions made based on the analysis have been criticized in the report. Errors of under estimation of the weakest soil strength of the order of 100% are visible on the graph. The decisions made from this analysis undoubtably contributed to the disaster. All Engineers know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Their graph is below.
I have contributed some addition considerations. My analysis of the hydrostatic effects of the surge imply a 20-30% weakening of these measurements at the depth of failure . Anisotropy considerations add a 5-25% weakening of the shear parameter in the horizontal direction parallel to the bedding planes of the soil. Most core measurements are made perpendicular to the bedding planes unless additional core preparation is done to get a sample that can be measured parallel to the bedding planes. My conclusion is that the U.S. Corps of Engineers modeled the levy response to a storm surge using soil strengths a least 150% higher than reality and that this was a major factor in the levee failure.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Modeling Levee Failure
The velocity and elastic moduli increase with effective pressure which represents the normal variation seen with depth within the Earth. Note that the variation is the most rapid at the shallowest depth. In the case of the New Orleans levee failures, the depth at which failure occurred seems to be at about 20 feet. The effective pressure would then be about 20 - 9 = 11 psi. Now consider what happens when Katrina's storm surge raises sea level by 10 feet. The pressure at 20 feet of depth is now 20 - 15.5 = 4.5 psi. This is a very large relative change in effective pressure and may have had a profound effect on the soil's elastic parameters and contributed to their failure. My simple analysis shown in the figure above shows a reduction in the shear strength of 35% at a depth of 17 feet. I do not recall reading that the Corps or SWB did any soil borings and strength measurements. Dr. Seed in the independent Engineering report did mention noting a layer of organic peat material and measured the strength of it and found it very low. I believe that soil boring and core measurements of elasticity should be a part of all levee construction and further postulate that the effects of changes in the hydrostatic head (water level) need to be included in the modeling. Because the elastic parameters vary quite rapidly with depth in the near surface, I believe that this variation should be an integral part of the Levee Failure Model. In the measurement of the soil's elastic parameters, care needs to be taken to measure any anisotropy in those coefficients. We Geophysicists have become quite familiar with the phenomenon of elastic anisotropy in layered (banded, bedded) rocks. The direction parallel to the bedding planes usually being the minimum values (weakest strength).
Again, near surface stress and strain are not my area of expertise and others undoubtedly have more authority than I do in this area but I felt it necessary to raise the issue in consideration of the Katrina disaster and other recent levee failures.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
More Katrina and Politics
By Bob Marshall
Times Picayune Staff writer
Before Hurricane Katrina, levee inspections in
Lunch, not levees
Corps and Levee Board officials last month admitted their annual inspections typically were little more than quick driving tours. Inspection of the
Warning signs missed
Bea said careful inspection of the levees was critical because the earthen embankments often hide defects until failure occurs. “That’s one of the problems that plagues engineers in this field,” he said. “The levee can look absolutely solid, tall and green and safe. But just below the surface you could have all kind of trouble brewing. “That’s why you have to stay sharp, you can’t be complacent. My basic conclusion, based on my experience, is that you can’t see something that is impugning the integrity of a levee by looking at it through binoculars from a road.” The engineers agreed that the mistake thought to be at the heart of the
Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.
I myself have witnessed large amounts of water flowing under the river levees at high water stage and wondered how safe we are from River flooding. The citizens of NOLA have great reason to suspect that all of the levees in th US are similarly neglected.
Katrina, the Corps of Engineers and Politics
The Judge dismissed the complaints because citizens can't sue the government but his words are damning to say the least:
methods for this undertaking were in large part a cause of this failure. In addition, the failure of Congress to oversee the building of the LPV and the failure to recognize that it was flawed from practically the outset–using the wrong calculations for storm surge, failing to take into account subsidence, failing to take into account issues of the strength of canal walls at the 17th Street Canal while allowing the scouring out of the canal–rest with those who are charged with oversight. The cruel irony here is that the Corps cast a blind eye, either as a result of executive directives or bureaucratic parsimony, to flooding caused by drainage needs and until therwise directed by Congress, solely focused on flooding caused by storm surge. Nonetheless, damage caused by either type of flooding is ultimately borne by the same public . Such egregious myopia is a caricature of bureaucratic inefficiency. It is not within this Court’s power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States’ power to address the failures of our laws and agencies. If not, it is certain that another tragedy such as this will occur again.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Katrina the Corps and Science
who have a limited concept of stress and strain relationships in the presence of anisotropy (almost certainly a factor in the soils), abnormal fluid pressure (certainly a factor), and significant stresses that are not vertical. The storm surge raised the water level (hydrostatic head) by about 10 feet . This increased (abnormal) fluid pressure was transmitted via the porous canal bottoms into the soils that supported the levee. The increased pressure caused a decrease in the soil strength (both compressional and shearing). As a result, a predictable failure of the levee occurred. A structural Geologist would look at this from the standpoint of M. King Hubbert's classic paper, "THE ROLE OF FLUID PRESSURE IN MECHANICS OF OVER THRUST FAULTING ", and would draw similarities to the Thrust Faults of the Canadian and Montana Rockies. The Corps explanation was that the levees were over topped and eroded from behind and that this was a 500 year event. So now we are faced with a Corps that has ignored Geologic and Geophysical advice for decades and has hired a PR firm with Tax Payer money to fight the bad press. We are also faced with a professional society, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ACSE) that has taken $2MM from the Corps to study the failures and has come up with a rosy picture of the Corps and tried to make Katrina out to be a storm of all storms which will never happen again (see link conflict of interest) . A Geologist activist at LSU has been fired for speaking out and the Corps has continued to shed the blame(Geologist(s) Slandered). Some Corps members have resorted to childish name calling (reference). I call on the members of the Geo Science community to take heed and even join the fight if you will. Katrina was only one example of the Corps failures. Many years ago when I was a Grad Student, I took a Graduate level course in Ground Water Hydrology. Most of the course was a diatribe against the Corps and all of its screw-ups. The USGS has been ignored while the Corps has gotten the go ahead to screw-up again and again. Join the Fight!
This is an ongoing problem. The Corps has obviously had some revised modeling done and it must have caused some panic because they started a new testing program on the repaired flood walls (Reference). This is a point of critical importance to the City and its future because if the repaired flood wall cannot stand up to several feet of water, then the rainfall in the City cannot effectively and promptly be pumped out to the lake. This will mean that the City will flood every time it rains hard. We have already had newly rebuilt and refurbished homes in Lake View flooded by rain because the Corps hadn't gotten the pumps working right - but that's a different Corps screw-up with the pumps that didn't work. How long do the Citizens of NOLA have to endure this incompetence and the attempts to cover it up?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
This marvelous thought is from my wonderful wife, Diana. Consider the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Most discussions that I have heard involve a magical increase of the amount of food to the point that 5,000 were fed and satisfied. This may be the explanation, but a more logical and much more meaningful explanation is that the people that were there had heard Jesus speak of loving their neighbor and taken it to heart. Thus, Diana envisions people sharing food that they at first had hid, or passing the loaves and fishes on so that there would be food for their neighbors, and etc. The miracle becomes one of divine inspiration rather than magic. We think the latter is a more modern explanation.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Towards an Sensible Energy Policy
Some Sensible and Do-able policys that Obama could enact tomorrow and have a positive effect on the Energy problem and the general economy
1. Put a $20-40 tariff on all imported oil. This will have a number of beneficial effects immediately.
a It will raise petroleum energy costs and therefore cut usage which will improve all types of pollution including CO2. It will also create a significant revenue stream for the Government.
b. The price increase will carry over to domestic production which will stimulate investment in exploration and production of American oil. This will produce many new jobs and new tax income for Governments.
c. The increased price of energy will provide the economic conditions for Alternative Energy to develop as a lower cost competitor to petroleum based energy.
2. Open all of the US outer continental shelf to petroleum exploration and production. This will immediately produce tens of thousands of high paying jobs and the sale of leases will produce a large yearly windfall of revenue for the government . As oil is produced, it will produce both new jobs and a significant revenue stream for the Government.
3. If a billionaire can create economic space travel that can compete well with NASA by simply offering a $10 Mil prize, why can't the Obama or the Gorical use similar carrot techniques to produce new and better energy generation technology. I know the answer. The Obama's and the Gore's of the world get their kicks from blaming others for the situation and want to punish those whose success has made them both jealous and guilty. GET OVER IT.
4. If wind and solar are being held back by insufficient power line infrastructure then this is truly a job for BIG GOVERNMENT. Does anyone remember the REA (rural electrification association?). When we wanted to get electricity to the Farms and Ranches, it took a big effort, but we got it to them eventually. Now we have the problem in reverse. The Farms and Ranches could produce huge amounts of electricity for our cities but the infrastructure is not there. Warren Buffet has said that alternative power generation will be the salvation of our languishing rural communities and put them in the forefront of job generation and income production once again. HOORAY
5. Isn't it time that the Snail Darter Minnow took a back seat to Hydroelectric power and water control by means of dams. We have let the interests of a few loud lobbyists for obscure animals hold up the development of much needed water and power resources. California and some other states are running out of water because we aren't capturing it and controlling its use as we should. Aquifers are being destroyed by over-pumping of wells. aquifer recharge through a system of Dams is a do-able remediation for overworked aquifers. Our population has grown to the point that wild life protection is not feasible in many areas. Anyone who has visited China understands that our land use must be engineered.
6. You've hired a Nobel Physicist as Science Advisor. Why not let him work on the problems of Nuclear Power Generation and Nuclear Waste Disposal instead of letting him embarrass himself with naive and half baked statements about the Global Warming controversy. For one thing this would allow him to be PROACTIVE rather than REACTIVE and second, it would be an excellent use of his talents. As he well knows, Nuclear is the long term answer to our energy needs. Nuclear can provide infinitely expandable energy and can be as safe as we want to engineer it to be. He also knows that the answer to nuclear waste disposal lies in the development of the technology to use it in the generation of even more power. LET THE MAN WORK!
7. Since the Obama regime is so big on new taxes, how about using a little economic common sense in designing the tax code. Accountants and Tax Lawyers are necessary but the current tax code is way too complex making it necessary to spend too much of the GDP on non income producing activities such as tax a$$ covering. How about simplifying the code so that ordinary people can fill out their business and personal tax forms with confidence.
* MR. Obama, if you really want to end this recession then start talking to Business Leaders as equals and stop using the press to fry them in public. Business has to lead us out of the recession and your choices are: LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. It is time to stop the anti capitalist demagoguery.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Comrade Obama
THE OBAMA PLAN:
1. He will try to break the back of the hard working middle class by taxing them to death. He is jealous of anyone who is successful and hard working
2. He will spend the tax money on the lazy class. He will pore funds into school systems that are totally uninterested in education of children. Teachers Unions will see to it that very little of the $ gets to the children. The winners are the Union power structure and the Principles and Administrators who inflate their salaries and self importance while the children languish.
3. He will pore money into the transportation infrastructure to pay off his debts to the construction, auto, and truckers unions.
4. He will pore money into alternative energy projects that will enrich certain political lobbyists. Alternative energy expenditures will not make energy crisis go away and it will cost a fortune and return a dime's worth of energy. Alternative energy will produce new and serious pollution problems as well. Efficient Solar requires rare metals that we will have to import and are a problem to dispose of after the solar cell is discarded.
3. He will pass laws that make dissent impossible (fairness doctirne). Obama can't seem to stand up and fight in a fair fight. The police state is already forming up in the name of equal rights (for the "right " people).
4. He will pass laws that force every worker to pay dues to and vote with the unions. Goon squads will enforce the rule that you vote the union way or else. This is the way it has been done in Chicago for over a century and this is the politics Obama knows and intends to use.
5. He will use front men to scare the public into compliance with his every scheme. Look at the radical statements about global warming f0r the model of 21st centure fear mongering. Thousands of eminent scientists have publically expressed their doubts about the degree of human impact on the climate. The Obama-Gore axis power dismisses them without any thought. of The use of the BIG LIE was developed by Stalin and used very effectively to control his unrully peoples in the Soviet Union. We should all be reading Alexsander Solzenitzen books (The Gulag Archepeligo, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,....) now to get a good understanding of what Gulags are and how OBAMA intends to use them.
OBAMA has the strong support of the Eastern Financial Intelligentsia. It is they who have benefited from the BAIL OUT. It is curious that BUSH (an ivy leager) and OBAMA (an ivy leager) should see eye to eye on bailing out their buddies at the big wall street firms. They keep trying to make us believe that if the wall street banks go down, then the world economy goes with it. Out here in the middle west our banks have money to lend and are still doing so. How can this be if wall street is bankrupt? The answer is that certain groups are being protected by the gorernment and as such are insiders. Our tax payer money is being stolen from us right under our noses by the very elected officials who have promised transparency.