"The east coast, and the north-east in particular, is overdue for a hurricane statistically," says Michael Wyllie, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Upton, New York. "Since we haven't had [a hurricane in New York] for a while, [the population] has become complacent. They don't believe that something like that can happen here."

When hurricanes strike, the low pressure and high winds drive a dome of water, called a storm surge, onto land. If a major hurricane struck close to New York City, the storm surge could raise the local sea level by 8 metres, swamping the financial district in lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, as well as areas of Jersey City. The subway, some road and rail tunnels, and La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports would be flooded. In total, more than 250 square kilometres could be affected, forcing 2.2 million people to evacuate in New York City alone.

"Our basic philosophy is that there's very little we are going to be able to do to stop the surge. What we want to do is to minimise the damage that's going to occur," says Maryann Marrocolo, assistant commissioner for planning for the New York City Office of Emergency Management. So city officials are focusing on raising public awareness, fortifying infrastructure, and planning evacuation and recovery efforts.

Yet some scientists say a storm surge could be held back. By building rotating flood barriers as much as 1.6 kilometres long and rising at least 8 metres above the normal high-water level, it may be possible to spare much of the city. Physical oceanographer Malcolm Bowman and his colleagues at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York, have proposed a plan to build four such barriers at key locations around Upper New York Bay (see Map). Three barriers would shelter most of the upper bay, including Manhattan. The fourth, with the aid of some sea walls, would protect Jamaica Bay and Kennedy airport. Bowman says they would keep the water out of half the area vulnerable to flooding, including Manhattan, Jersey City and parts of Brooklyn.

It would be an enormous undertaking. "This is on the scale of the Hoover dam," Bowman says. The barriers would be akin to the one on the river Thames, downstream from central London, that protects the city from flooding by exceptionally high tides. The 523-metre-long Thames barrier, completed in 1982, took eight years and £1.3 billion to build, but it is dwarfed by Bowman's plan. Each of the four New York barriers would span up to 1.6 kilometres, and estimates of the possible cost start at tens of billions of dollars.

Even this huge price tag need not rule the project out. The damage from a severe hurricane ploughing through Manhattan could amount to as much as $300 billion, according to estimates based on simulations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, not counting indirect impacts on the nation's economy.

The response to Bowman's proposal has, however, been lukewarm. "That's so far beyond the scope of what we can accomplish," Marrocolo says. The Regional Plan Association, an organisation of political leaders in 31 counties in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, held its annual strategy meeting for the region last month, but Jennifer Cox, RPA's director of geography programmes, says that discussion at the meeting involved no firm plans to build such a structure.

The fact that the barriers would protect some people but not others doesn't help with the politics of such an expensive, publicly funded project. The southern shores of Brooklyn and Staten Island would remain vulnerable, as would the often battered southern coast of Long Island. Some scientists raise other objections. An inherent problem, says Klaus Jacob, a senior research scientist at Columbia University in New York City, who analysed Bowman's proposal for the New York Academy of Sciences, is that sooner or later a storm big enough to swamp the barriers will come along. If people forgo other safety measures because they feel protected by the barriers, it could lead to an even bigger calamity.

Even if no one is ready to start building, all levels of government continue to fund research on the ideas. Bowman plans to apply for an upcoming grant of around $3 million from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which he would use to conduct preliminary engineering studies for the barriers.

If other cities' experiences are any guide, it would take a major flood for people to rally behind a barrier system. In London, the trigger was a calamitous flood in 1953, and even then construction of the Thames barrier didn't begin for 21 years. For New York, a flood is looking increasingly likely. Sea levels in the area have been rising more than 2 centimetres per decade due to the tilting and settling of the land mass after the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age. And climate change is predicted to make the increase in sea level accelerate. The higher the sea level, the less potent a storm would have to be to cause a catastrophic flood.

The Gulf Coast

The coast of Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, and saving it will be "one of the top five engineering projects of this century", says environmental engineer Vincent Neary of Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville.

Flood-control structures have for years starved the delta of vital new sediment, allowing encroachment by the sea. Then hurricane Katrina came along and did 50 years of damage in a couple of nights, converting 189 square kilometres of wetlands east of the Mississippi to open water. That's more than the 155 square kilometres previously expected to be lost by 2050.

To stem the loss, engineers must resupply the wetlands with sediment without obstructing river navigation and exacerbating the flood risk. Past plans have failed as a result of politics, lack of funds and competing priorities, says Charles Groat, a former director of the US Geological Survey. For example, when Katrina hit, the Army Corps of Engineers was still 12 years from completing flood protection structures for New Orleans that were planned after hurricane Betsy in 1965.

This week, a group of scientists led by Denise Reed, a geologist at the University of New Orleans, has been presenting its ideas to Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco. Neary says sediment-laden water could be diverted from the Mississippi south of New Orleans. This month, the Corps of Engineers will also deliver a new plan.

Flood-proofing New Orleans and the coast might cost anything up to $100 billion, and whether either plan will get the go-ahead remains in doubt. One reason for this can be found in a scathing report on past plans, published last week by the independent levee investigation team headed by Raymond Seed of the University of California, Berkeley: "Flood control for developed urban areas comes in last [because] it doesn't make money for anyone."

Jeff Hecht

Sacramento Valley

"There are two kinds of levees: those that have failed and those that will." It is an adage that Sacramento would do well to heed, as California's capital city is reckoned by experts to be in greater danger of flooding than New Orleans was before Katrina.

Much of the city lies below the flood level of the Sacramento river, and is protected only by ageing levees of uncertain strength. In the path of any floods lie 250,000 people and 140,000 structures. Potential damage is estimated at $25 billion. Beyond the city, the river runs 120 kilometres through a flat delta of farmland to San Francisco Bay. The Sacramento river and the San Joaquin that joins it also provide drinking water for 23 million Californians and irrigation for farms that produce half the nation's fruit and vegetables. The ground in the delta has subsided up to 8 metres below sea level, and the tidal rivers are held above the land by massive dirt levees. If those levees failed, the salty San Francisco Bay water could pour deep into the delta, contaminating the water supply and causing $40 billion in damage.

The state of California has been slowly bolstering Sacramento's levees over the past two decades, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has allocated $500 million for the 4000 kilometres of levees in Sacramento and the delta in next year's proposed budget. The state is also beginning to modify the Folsom dam above Sacramento to stem storm flows more effectively, but that would still leave the area with a relatively low flood protection compared with other cities in the country, says Rod Mayer, California's flood-control chief. Improving the delta levees, which are vulnerable to damage by earthquake, could cost another $10 billion. Meanwhile, sea levels are rising, the land continues to subside, and houses keep being built behind the levees as California's population increases.

Julie Rehmeyer, San Francisco


From issue 2554 of New Scientist magazine, 05 June 2006, page 8

Bernanke said Monday that inflation had reached levels at or above the range the Fed deems comfortable, raising expectations for a rate hike at the Fed's policy meeting at the end of June.

The central bank has raised rates 16 consecutive times since June 2004, which has helped to bolster the dollar. Higher rates can strengthen a currency by providing higher rates of returns on certain types of investment.

The European Central Bank is also widely expected to raise interest rates by at least a quarter of a percent to 2.75 percent when it meets Thursday in Madrid, Spain.

The drop of the index, the biggest daily dive since Jan. 28, 2002, when it tumbled by 91.93 points, or 6.33 percent.

Analysts attributed the drastic fall to profit-taking by investors amid worries over interest rate hike by China's central bank.

The continuous drastic falls on overseas stock markets in recent days were also a contributing factor, they said.

Chief U.S. negotiator Wendy Cutler said the two sides would focus this week on relatively non-controversial issues - what she called "low-hanging fruit" - and save more difficult topics like rice, automobiles and the treatment of products made in a North Korean industrial park for later rounds.

Negotiators are pushing for a deal by January so Congress can vote on it before the expiration of White House authority to negotiate trade agreements that cannot be amended. That authority expires in mid-2007.

The KorUS Free Trade Agreement would be the biggest U.S. free trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Congress approved in 1993.

South Korea is the world's 10th-largest economy and the United States' seventh-largest trading partner, with two-way goods trade totaling about $72 billion last year. But South Korea has a much more protected market than the United States.

About 45 South Korean farmers, union members and other activists have travelled to Washington to protest the talks, but Cutler said she remained "optimistic about our ability to conclude a high-quality, comprehensive agreement."

"The political will is clearly there on both sides," Cutler told reporters as the protesters banged drums and chanted anti-FTA (free trade agreement) slogans outside the U.S. Trade Representative's office. "Both sides are entering into the negotiations with their eyes wide open," she said.

Cutler told reporters Washington would not ask Seoul to open its market to more American films as part of the pact. South Korea already made a significant concession by reducing the number of days theaters must show domestic films to 73 from 146, which goes into effect in July, she said.

However, Cutler criticized new South Korean rules that would make it harder for big U.S. drug companies to compete in the market. The United States wants those overturned and even greater access as part of the pact, she said.

Protests Planned

South Korean activists have said that opening the South Korean market to more U.S. goods and services by tearing down high tariffs and other barriers would endanger the livelihood of 15 million South Korean workers and 3.5 million farmers.

Opponents of trade liberalization in South Korea have a reputation for violent protests, such as at a World Trade Organization meeting in December in Hong Kong, where they clashed repeatedly with police.

Oh Jongryul, co-chair of the Korean Alliance Against the KORUS FTA, told reporters they planned only "peaceful and legal actions" this week in Washington.

Those include daily rallies outside the U.S. Trade Representative's office, a candlelight vigil in a park across from the White House and a meeting with sympathetic lawmakers in Congress, organizers said.

South Korean labor unions and farmers will hold a general strike and huge street protest on July 12 - when the second round of negotiations will be underway in Seoul - in an effort to persuade the South Korean government "to stop the KORUS talks," said Kim Taeil, general secretary of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

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Norway's government also excluded shares in mining group Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX) from the fund - one of the world's biggest pension funds - for environmental reasons.

The fund sold its holdings in both firms, which had been worth about $430 million at the end of 2005 - most of it in Wal-Mart stock - by the end of last month, the finance ministry said.

"These companies are excluded because, in view of their practices, investing in them entails an unacceptable risk that the fund may be complicit in serious, systematic or gross violations of norms," Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said.

The move raised the number of companies excluded from the fund for what Oslo calls ethical reasons to 19. Norway has previously ejected companies involved in producing anti-personnel land mines, cluster bombs or nuclear weapons.

The Finance Ministry based the exclusions on the recommendations of the fund's ethical council.

"The recommendation to exclude Wal-Mart cites serious/systematic violations of human rights and labour rights," the finance ministry said. "The recommendation to exclude Freeport is based on serious environmental damage."

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman declined to comment. Freeport-McMoRan's spokesman said the company rejects the allegations and they are based on a misunderstanding.

The ministry said the council had found "an extensive body of material" that indicated Wal-Mart had broken norms, including employing minors against international rules, allowing hazardous working conditions at many of its suppliers and blocking workers' efforts to form unions.

It also listed other alleged Wal-Mart abuses including pressuring workers to work overtime without compensation, discriminating against women in pay and blocking "all attempts to unionise".

It said Wal-Mart employees were "in a number of cases unreasonably punished and locked in".

The council's report encompassed Wal-Mart's operations in the United States and Canada and its suppliers in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Lesotho, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, Malawi, Madagascar, Swaziland, Bangladesh, China and Indonesia.

The finance ministry said Norway's central bank, which manages the investment fund, had invited Wal-Mart to comment on the allegations in September, but the company did not respond.

Halvorsen said Norway might provide an example to other investors in the way it exercises ownership rights.

"It is of great value that others see what we do," Halvorsen, who also leads the Socialist Left party, told a news conference.

The ministry blamed Freeport-McMoRan for using a natural river system to dispose of tailings from a huge copper mine on the island of New Guinea in Indonesia. "The Council on Ethics finds that the environmental damage caused by the mining operations is extensive, long-term and irreversible," it said.

Freeport-McMoRan's spokesman Bill Collier said the tailings were not toxic. "They did contact us," he said of the fund's managers, Norway's central bank. "We furnished them with our information, but we feel this reflects a misunderstanding."

Collier said Freeport conducts comprehensive monitoring of the water in the river and the area where the tailings are deposited, including sediment, plant species and aquatic organisms. "And it has never detected a problem," he said.

The fund had held about 2.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($416 million) worth of Wal-Mart securities at the end of the 2005, and its holdings in Freeport-McMorRan were worth about 116 million crowns, the ministry said. All were sold by the end of May.

The Government Pension Fund - Global, which invests surplus oil wealth in foreign stocks and bonds, was worth 1.48 trillion Norwegian crowns ($246.2 billion) at the end of March.

Contributing: Carole Vaporean in New York, Jessica Wohl in Chicago and Joergen Frich in Oslo.