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New Orleans: On Point Live! American Coastline — The View From Louisiana

Janet Wilson
/
WWNO

We take On Point to New Orleans to look at the state of America’s battered coastlines.

In Louisiana, they understand how nature and the not-so-natural can hit the coast.  Hurricane Katrina.  The BP oil spill.  Sea level rise and coastal erosion across the Louisiana waterfront.  When Katrina hit, it looked like Louisiana’s problem.  When Superstorm Sandy hit the most populated coastline in America we saw it as everybody’s problem.  Here in New Orleans, they’re just a little ahead of the rest of the country in thinking it through. This hour On Point:  we’re with a live audience in New Orleans thinking about the great American coastline, and how it will change.

Guests

Denise Reed, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of New Orleans. Chief scientist at the Water Institute of the Gulf.

Tommy Michot, research scientist at the Institute for Coastal Ecology and Engineer at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Jarvis Deberry, award-winning columnist for the Times-Picayune. (@jarvisdeberry)

From Tom's Reading List:

New Orleans Lens: More massive tar mats from BP oil spill discovered on Louisiana beaches — “According to the U.S. Coast Guard, in the past few weeks this one spot has yielded 1.5 million pounds of ‘oily material’ – a designation that includes oil products as well as associated shell, sand and water. And that’s in addition to 1.79 million pounds already collected from Fourchon, by far the largest share of the 8.9 million pounds recovered from all Louisiana beaches in the past two years.”

Times-Picayune: Louisiana’s top coastal official may explore lawsuit to block levee board suit against energy companies — “To illustrate the damage caused by the energy industry, Jones used historical aerial photographs of wetlands surrounding the Delacroix community in St. Bernard Parish. He said the photos showed how the dredging of canals to access oil exploration and development wells by Devon Energy and Murphy Oil took place in wetlands that later turned largely to open water.”

USA Today: Climate change could spawn more frequent El Ninos– “Some of the worst El Niños, the infamous climate patterns that shake up weather around the world, could double in frequency in upcoming decades due to global warming, says a new study out Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change. During an El Niño, water temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean tend to be warmer-than-average for an extended period of time – typically at least three to five months. This warm water brings about significant changes in global weather patterns.

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