Global Warming Debacle

The unmasking of bias and down-right fraud amongst the Climatology Scientific Elite is shocking but not unexpected by other Scientists whose dissent has long been quashed. The absolute rape of Scientific Method is caused bythe Politicization of Science and is the result of the practice of Governments of funding Scientific Research. The process of funding Research involves the need to convince a board of decision makers (usually lay people) of the importance and timeliness of the proposed Research. This is the same process that private Researchers go through to achieve their funding but there is a big difference. Private Research is funded by a foundation or Corporation using THEIR own money. They take the risk to act on the Research results. Bias is assumed and even encourage if it furthers the economic goals of the Company. In the case of Government funded Research, the bias is political and is FUNDED BY THE TAX PAYERS who then are forced to take the risk of acting on the Research's results! On top of this, the Research is advertised as being unbiased basic Research of the most fundamental importance. The results of Governmental Research, in part, are:
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.

Soil & Rock Physical Parameters and Levee Design

I have already raised the question of whether the Corps of Engineers did soil borings (cores sampling) to determing the elastic parameters of the soils below the levees. The independent study by the Engineering committee headed by Dr. Seed criticizes the analysis and decision making based upon those samples. In the previous blog entry I have illustrated the hydrostatic effects of the storm surge on the strenght of the soils. Now I will raise the issue of anisotropy. Soils and rocks are not homogeneous bodies. Their heterogeneity is not usually random but rather consists of thin quasi homogeneous layers of differing properties. These layers can be characterized by the terms, Coarse, Medium, and Fine Sand, Silt, Clay, Calcareous (shell), and Organic (peat). Each of these layers has a different set of elastic parameters (strength). The layers are often very thin (less than a mm). The effect of this layering is to introduce anisotropy into the elastic parameters. Anisotropy causes the strength of the soils or rocks to vary with direction of measurement. The usual directions of interest are parallel and perpendicular to the bedding planes. Differences on the order of 20% between the parallel and perpendicular velocities have been reported in the Geophysical Literature. The orientation of the elastic parameters is such that the weakest direction is parallel to the bedding and thus in the horizontal direction. I propose that the Corps of Engineers familiarize themselve with the effects of anisotropy as well as overpressure and make sure that their lab measurements on soil borings measure all of the effects and further, that their levee models include these effects. I believe that the Katrina failure of some of the canals was predictable if correct and complete modeling based on detailed soil boring analysis was done during 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.

Modeling Levee Failure

The modeling of stress and strain and the breaking or "failure" of solid bodies is a science that has at least 200 years of development behind it. It is an integral part of the training of Civil Engineers, Structural Geologists and Solid Earth Geophysicists. The forces involved are usually due to Gravity. The parameters of interest are the weight distribution of the object, and the strength of the materials in the object. The strength of the materials is broken into two independent parameters, the compressional strength and the shearing strength. Levees are primarily made of soil which is a porous and permeable solid which is water wet. The physical properties of water wet rocks both consolidated and unconsolidated are studied by Geophysicists for the purpose of determining their effects upon Seismic (sound) waves propagating through them. I am not an expert on near surface stress and strain modeling but I propose that the parameters that are used in such modeling are closely related to the elastic parameters of the water wet soils. This is the subject I wish to address in this blog entry. Both the shear and compressional elastic moduli are known to be a well behaved function of the "effective pressure". Effective pressure is the weight of the overburden (soil and rock above our depth of interest) minus the pressure of the fluid (water) in the pore spaces. Effective pressure is essentially the weight born by the solid frame of the rock or soil by grain to grain contact and is thus a primary factor in determining the elasticity of the entire rock. Laboratory measurements of the velocity of Seismic waves through a core specimen measured at different effective pressures are available in the Geophysical literature. Examples Below:


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.

More Katrina and Politics

We depend upon the Levees and Dams of the US to protect us from floods. The Corps of Engineers is responsible construction, inspection and maintenance. The following article was copied out of the Times Picayune and addresses the quality of the Corps inspection efforts.

By Bob Marshall

Times Picayune Staff writer

Before Hurricane Katrina, levee inspections in New Orleans were so superficial that one engineer who used to work for the Army Corps of Engineers said he conducted more diligent inspections on Florida levees that protected cattle. Engineers familiar with proper levee inspection routines across the country said the annual tours of New Orleans’ vital hurricane protection levees—described by critics as cursory drive-bys more about fellowship and lunch than looking for problems—sounded nothing like the serious geotechnical investigations conducted in other places. Further, the hasty approach taken on the 100-mile, five-hour tours by the Corps of Engineers and its local partners, the Orleans Levee Board and the state Department of Transportation and Development, did not come close to meeting federal regulations. “Annual inspections take many forms, but any way you slice it, you couldn’t inspect 100 miles in five hours—not properly, anyway,” said Thomas Wolff, assistant dean of engineering at Michigan State University and a member of the National Science Foundation team that investigated the levee failures in New Orleans. “You certainly couldn’t meet the requirements by looking down those levees with binoculars from a roadway,” Wolff said. Section 208.10 of Title 33 in the Code of Federal Regulations details how the corps and its local partners must maintain levees and floodwalls. The mandate includes regular inspections to look for encroachments on the levee or its right of way such as fences, patios and pools; the growth of shrubs and trees whose root systems could damage the system’s integrity; signs of seepage or sand boils; subsidence; animal burrows; and the accumulation of trash or debris. A long list of possible problems is spelled out, and inspectors are given a grading system to rank the seriousness of any problems found. The regulation calls for the thorough inspections to be made “immediately prior to the beginning of the flood season, immediately following each major water period and otherwise at intervals not exceeding 90 days.” Further, in the corps’ Flood Control Operations and Maintenance Policies, Regulation 1130-2-530 states, “Projects that protect urban areas or ones where failure would be catastrophic and result in loss of life should be inspected annually.” It also tells corps personnel to report nonfederal sponsors who are not complying with the regulations.

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 17^th Street Canal levee usually took place from a stop on the Old Hammond Highway, rather than a thorough walk or drive of the flood control structure that is 15,000 feet long. Records show the inspections were scheduled to end early enough for a taxpayer-paid lunch, costing as much as $900 for 57 people.The agencies said they conducted more frequent informal inspections, typically when personnel were going to the levees for other purposes. For instance, the Levee Board said it relied on grass cutters to report any problems they might see. But Wolff, who worked for the corps from 1970 to 1985, said inspections of levees in the districts where he worked, from Missouri to California, were much more formal events. They involved crews of as many as eight engineers who drove and walked the levees, and seldom covered more than 10 miles in a day. He said major inspections of the Mississippi River levees were conducted once every five years, and resulted in written reports, which were used as references before the next such inspection. Less rigorous, but still thorough, inspections were done annually. “You pretty much physically inspected the entire levee over two days,” he said. “Normally that might be as long a stretch as 20 miles. We seldom did more than 10 miles in a day. You couldn’t if you were conducting a thorough inspection.” Bob Bea, a University of California-Berkeley engineering professor who was also on the NSF team, said his levee inspections in Florida during a corps career in the 1950s were even more rigorous. “In some cases we actually came back and did soil borings to inspect suspicious sites,” he said. “And those levees were protecting cattle.”

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 New Orleans catastrophes—sheet piling too short to prevent seepage—would not have been visible through a walking inspection. And while the use of new, sophisticated ground sonars might have detected weakened soil layers before Katrina, justifying the expense of such a search would have been difficult without evidence, especially in view of recent budget cutbacks. But that’s why these inspections have to be done conscientiously,” Bea said. “You’re talking about a system that is supposed to keep half a million people safe.” In fact, investigators now believe there were warning signs that trouble was brewing below the grassy surface of the levees. Residents living along the 17^th Street Canal levee had reported flooded lawns to the Sewerage & Water Board, a problem the Levee Board and Corps of Engineers said they never heard about. Further, NSF investigators said several residents reported other leaks, sand boils and depressions in the levees near the floodwalls—warning signs that the federal regulations tell the corps to look for in the mandated inspections.

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 history of the drainage ("outfall") canal system in New Orleans goes back more than a century. The 17th street outfall canal dates to before WWI (at least 1913). The political control was the purvey of the Orleans Levee Board (OLB) who had authority over the land primarily, the Sewer and Water Board who had control over the use of the canal for drainage, and the Corps of Engineers who were charged to protect the city from storm surges. In the 1960's enter the Lake Pontchartrain's wetlands environmental groups who wanted to preserve wildlife, fishing, swimming and boating interests. The Corps was always under the the fiscal control of Congress, but this is mainly a problem of sales and consensus building for the Corps that they are used to and expert at. After hurricane Betsy, in the 1960's the Corps developed a "barrier plan" similar to the Dutch Zuider Zee. It would have controlled the storm surge in Lake Pontchartrain by means of a lock and dam installed in the Rigolettes ). This proposal was delayed and stymied by environmental and economic concerns and was abandoned in the late 1980's for the "high level plan" which involved raising the height of the levees and flood wall along the outfall canals. This decision put NOLA at great risk and transferred the responsibility of the canals to the OLD and SWB. Then the SWB in attempting to improve its ability to drain rainfall from the City requested permission from the Corps to dredge the 17th street canal to improve it drainage efficiency. In spite of warnings, the Corps granted the permit and dredging was completed in the late 1990's. Warnings were ignored that pointed to the exact spot where the levee later failed. All of this can be read in the Legal Brief on the class action suit against the Corps and the U.S.
The Judge dismissed the complaints because citizens can't sue the government but his words are damning to say the least:

This story–fifty years in the making–is heart-wrenching. Millions of dollars were squandered in building a levee system with respect to these outfall canals which was known to be inadequate by the Corps’ own calculations. The byzantine funding and appropriation
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.

STANWOOD R. DUVAL, JR.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE

Katrina the Corps and Science

The story of the flooding of New Orleans is now full of Urban Myths mostly perpetrated by the Corps of Engineers. It was NOT A NATURAL DISASTER. It was an ENGINEERING FAILURE comparable to CHERNOBYL. The design of the levees was fatally flawed and the Corps is busily trying to hide that fact from the public. They have hired a public relations firm and lobbied to have a Geologist critic fired from LSU and have accused him of spreading miss information because he is not an engineer. The partial story is at NY Times If you want the full story, go to: http://levees.org/index. The short story is that Katrina, although a large and dangerous storm, was down graded to category three before landfall. The storm surge, although high, was not a record breaker and was LOWER THAN THE DESIGNED MAXIMUM storm surge height. The flaw in their design was a simple one in my theory. Civil Engineers are used to designing buildings and structures that sit vertically and are subject to gravitational forces. The Levees most of their life time just sit there and do the same. The exception came when the storm surge raised the level of water to a considerable height. The shape of the stress ellipsoid was changed suddenly as a significant horizontal force perpendicular to the Levee was introduced by the hydrostatic component from the filled canal. The design engineers had used the compressional strength of the soils and now suddenly the SHEAR STRENGTH of the soils became a critical factor. The result was classic slumping of the levee, i.e., the horizontal thrusting of the levee until it completely breached. The post mortem on the levee showed that the cement T-wall was not over topped and back eroded as the Corps now contends. Rather, the entire levee was thrust more than 45 feet to the side and then the wall fell over(See the Independent Engineering Report fig 2.3b) . This was a predictable response to the forces involved if one took the time to model the levee as it was subjected to the forces of the surge and if one used the appropriate physical constants. We in the Earth Sciences have encountered Engineers
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?

THE REAL MIRACLE

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.