The Blinne Blog

God and Katrina

When natural disasters happen inevitably Christians (including myself) embark on a task known as a theodicy. A theodicy defends God's righteousness against the apparent injustice of the event in question. Tony Campolo does this for Katrina.

There are still other religionists who take the opportunity to tell us that God is punishing America for its many sins. Undoubtedly, there are some al-Qaeda fanatics who right now are saying that Katrina is the hand of God, striking America for what we have done to the people of Iraq and to the Palestinians. Furthermore, there are Christians who, in the weeks to come, can be counted on to thunder from their pulpits that Katrina is God’s wrath against the immorality of this nation, pointing out that New Orleans is the epitome of our national degradation and debauchery. To all of this I say, "Wrong."

The God revealed in Jesus did not come into the world "to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:17) There can be no arguments over the claim that, for a variety of reasons, our nation deserves punishment. But when the Bible tells us about the grace of God, it is giving us the good news that our loving God does not give us what we truly deserve. Certainly, God would not create suffering for innocent people, who were--for the most part--Katrina’s victims.

Dr. Campolo is absolutely right that God would not create such suffering amongst the poor. Throughout church history theodicies are the occasion where the greatest theologians most erred because they said too much. For example, errors in Leibnitz' theodicy that this world is the best of all possible worlds was mercilessly critiqued in Voltaire's Candide. Campolo commits an error by denying God's omnipotence. We cannot go there any more than we can go where the religionists above went. When we do a theodicy Scripture guides us where not to go but does not allow relief of a theodicy that is bullet-proof. Silence and humility are the better part of wisdom for a theodicy.

So, if poor people are not the particular object of God's wrath -- Scripture is replete with the concept that God always identifies with the poor and oppressed -- then what's going on here? Could it be the wrong sins are being identified as a cause of this hurricane? If Dr. Campolo is right about the poor --  and I believe he is -- then maybe it is the very oppression of the poor that is being judged.

Let's consider what has happened. The poor in New Orleans could not escape even when their very lives depended upon it. Thanks to the hurricane they now have an opportunity to escape the crushing crime and poverty. This is not to say that many will want to return. But, there are also many that may choose to leave.  For those who do, it is incumbent upon those who call ourselves Christian to welcome our new neighbors and make them a valued part of their new communities. That means housing and jobs and dignity. Their government failed them not only after the hurricane but also before. Let's not fail them again.

Katrina: Doing the Math

Reuters reported the current death toll.

The recovery of Katrina's victims speeded up in the last two days. As of Thursday, Mississippi had recorded 201 deaths and Louisiana 118, while other affected states had much lower numbers.

Let's assume that the death toll quintuples to 500. How many people were evacuated after the hurricane?

Rescuers plucked thousands more from streets, levees, roads and rooftops. At least 32,000 were rescued and another 70,000 were evacuated from New Orleans after the storm, according to official figures.

That would make the evacuation 99.5% successful, 99.9% successful if you include the pre-hurricane evacuation!

Louisiana Homeland Security -- Part of Louisiana Government -- Blocks Aid to New Orleans

Left-wing blogs are going nuts saying that the Federal Homeland Security blocked food and water from the Red Cross to victims in New Orleans. The story is half right. The Red Cross' web site says:

Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city. And while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

CNN reported the story this way:

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) -- Louisiana officials rebuffed American Red Cross requests to enter New Orleans with relief supplies last week because of concerns over logistical difficulties, Red Cross and state officials said Thursday.

The Red Cross never launched its relief effort in the city.

The national president of the American Red Cross, Marsha Evans, first made the request to undertake the operation during a visit to the state on September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck, a local Red Cross chapter official said.

Vic Howell, chief executive officer of the agency's Louisiana Capital Area Chapter, said he renewed that request the next day to Col. Jay Mayeaux, the deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

"We had adequate supplies, the people and the vehicles," Howell said at a news conference in Baton Rouge. "It was the middle of a military rescue operation trying to save lives. We were asked not to go in, and we abided by that recommendation."

The name Louisiana Department of Homeland Security keeps coming up. Who are they? It sure sounds like the feds. I went to their web site and here is their self-description:

The Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LHLS & EP); formally the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness (LOEP), was created by the Civil Act of 1950 and is under the Louisiana Military Department. In 1976 LHLS & EP via the Louisiana government reorganization, was moved to the Department of Public Safety (DPS). In 1990 LHLS & EP was transferred again to the Military Department. In 2003 the Agency name was changed to the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, reflecting the additional responsibilities to the State and her citizens.

Finally, note the sign that I have a picture. It is part of the department of public safety of the state police.

Embryonic Stem Cells No Magic Bullet

Evangelical Christians have been accused of being anti-science for two reasons: opposing neo-Darwinian evolution and opposing embryonic stem cell research.  While the former argument is fair, the latter is not. Science does not want to be ethically judged from the outside. How dare you place strictures about a therapy that was so self-evidently the next big thing? The Bush Administration was excoriated for only supporting stem cell lines that were corrupted by mouse cells. Scientists argued we cannot do good research based on these defective stem cell lines. Now they have a bigger problem. The stem cells mutate in the same way cancer cells do.

News @ nature.com is reporting that Gene defects plague stem-cell lines.

Embryonic stem cells that are cultured in the lab accumulate an alarming array of genetic changes, including mutations known to be linked to cancer. The finding throws into question whether such cells could eventually be used for therapy, unless they can be kept fresh and checked for mutations before use.

Researchers think that stem cells, which can be programmed to grow into any kind of cell, could one day be used to regenerate or replace cells and organs damaged by disease. But growing these cells has proven problematic.

In January, researchers announced that most human embryonic stem-cell lines, including ones approved by the US government for use in federally funded studies, have been contaminated by animal cells used as a growth medium in lab dishes. Any cell containing such foreign proteins would presumably trigger a damaging immune response if transplanted into a human patient. Researchers realized they would have to grow their cells differently in order to use them for therapy.

Now another difficulty has come to light. The longer the cells are kept, and the more they divide, the more errors they build up in their genetic code. "These mutations we are finding are a much bigger problem," says Aravinda Chakravarti of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

How does this happen?

All DNA tends to accumulate mutations as it divides, because each step in the copying process can introduce errors. But previous, smaller studies of stem cells had not found problematic levels of mutations.

Chakravarti and his colleagues decided to take a closer look, examining nine of the human embryonic stem-cell lines that have federal approval. They compared frozen, archived cells with 'daughter' generations that had been created from these.

Many of the archived cells seemed normal, although some had already divided tens of times to build up cell numbers into the billions. But errors began to appear after further divisions. Out of nine cell lines, eight developed one or more genetic changes commonly observed in human cancers, the team reports in Nature Genetics¹.

The researchers make the following damning assessment:

The finding undermines a general assumption that stem cells remain unblemished until they are programmed to become a certain type of cell. "This is not good news. It suggests that the biological properties of the cells before and after replicating could be different," says Chakravarti.

Does this argue just against the federal lines because we need to replicate them more? That's the argument made by Roger Pedersen:

Stem-cell expert Roger Pedersen of the University of Cambridge, UK, says he takes a "glass half full" view of the findings, because the billions of archived cells seemed normal. This shows that the replications needed to boost stem-cell numbers to usable levels do not necessarily cause problems.

Pedersen adds that the study supports the idea that more, fresh stem-cell lines would be useful for the scientific community: US federal research currently relies on a very limited number of lines.

My response is that this shows a possible defect in the whole approach given the small number of stem cells in a blastocyst. Thus, you need to be replicate the stem cells and at the same time you need to minimize the number of generations from the original stem cells. The problem may not be detectable -- the billions of cells seemed normal -- until the number of generations is increased. The bottom line is that a source other than human embryos is needed for better, fresher stem cells.

Colorado State Forecasts More Bad News For Hurricanes

Link: FORECAST OF ATLANTIC HURRICANE ACTIVITY FOR SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2005.

Following a record amount of June-July tropical cyclone activity and an active August in which Hurricane Katrina caused the greatest economic loss ever inflicted by a hurricane on the United States, we are continuing the bad news by predicting above-average activity for September and October. This year should be one of the most active and is already the most destructive hurricane season on record.

This cannot be good news for the hurricane-ravaged gulf coast. CSU was also right on the money for their August forecast:

Eric Blake spent from 1998-2001 as a graduate student at Colorado State University. His research efforts went into the development of an Atlantic basin August-only hurricane forecast scheme which was used for our 5 August 2005 forecast. See Blake (2002) or Blake and Gray (2004) for background information. Our August 2005 forecast called for well above-average activity, and this forecast verified remarkably well.

CSU forecast and verification of August-only hurricane activity made in early August

Tropical Cyclone Parameters and	August 2005	Adjusted August	August 2005
1950-2000 August Average (in parentheses)	Statistical Forecast	2005 Forecast	Verification
Named Storms (NS) (2.8)	3.2	5	5
Named Storm Days (NSD) (11.8)	12.1	20	21
Hurricanes (H) (1.6)	1.3	3	2
Hurricane Days (HD) (5.7)	6.7	10	7
Intense Hurricanes (IH) (0.6)	0.9	1	1
Intense Hurricane Days (IHD) (1.2)	2.8	3	2.5
Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (NTC) (26.4)	33.7	50	42

The CSU hurricane experts do not believe that global warming has anything to do with additional hurricanes.

Many individuals have queried whether the unprecedented landfall of four destructive hurricanes in a seven-week period during August-September 2004 and the landfall of two more major hurricanes in the early part of the 2005 season is related in any way to human-induced climate changes. There is no evidence that this is the case. If global warming were the cause of the increase in United States hurricane landfalls in 2004 and 2005 and the overall increase in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity of the past eleven years (1995-2005), one would expect to see an increase in tropical cyclone activity in the other storm basins as well (ie., West Pacific, East Pacific, Indian Ocean, etc.). This has not occurred. When tropical cyclones worldwide are summed, there has actually been a slight decrease since 1995. In addition, it has been well-documented that the measured global warming during the 25-year period of 1970-1994 was accompanied by a downturn in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity over what was experienced during the 1930s through the 1960s.

We attribute the heightened Atlantic major hurricane activity between 1995-2005 to be a consequence of the multidecadal fluctuations in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) as we have been discussing in our Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts for several years. Major hurricane activity in the Atlantic has been shown to undergo marked multidecadal fluctuations that are directly related to North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies. When the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation is running strong, the central Atlantic equatorial trough (ITCZ) becomes stronger. The stronger the Atlantic equatorial trough becomes, the more favorable are conditions for the development of major hurricanes in the central Atlantic. Since 1995, the THC has been flowing more strongly, and there has been a concomitant increase in major hurricanes in the tropical Atlantic.

Dr. Gray gave an explanation in English :-) for National Geographic. Note thermohaline circulation above is a more technical description of why salt content affects sea surface temperature which is a main driver for hurricane intensity. One should note that global warming would melt the polar ice caps, decreasing the salinity, reducing sea surface temperature,  and thus potentially decreasing the intensity of hurricanes.

CSU's Gray and Klotzbach say the stormier summers are part of a well-established cycle of fluctuating hurricane activity. The cycles are caused by ocean currents that alter the salt content of the water, Klotzbach said. When the salt content is higher in the Atlantic—as it is now—the water is warmer, and that causes more tropical storms to form.

When the salt content is lower, the water is cooler and fewer hurricanes form, Klotzbach said.

The cycles take 25 to 40 years to run their courses. The present cycle of increased hurricanes started in 1995 and is expected to continue for at least another decade, perhaps longer.

Klotzbach said that if global warming were affecting hurricane formation, more storms would be forming around the world instead of only in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.

"I really can't pick out a trend of increased hurricanes around the world," Klotzbach said. "If you look at the eastern Pacific Ocean, hurricane activity there has gone way down since 1995. There's no trend toward more storms there. It's a tricky problem."