Castles in the Air

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal continues to tout his sand berm scheme as a panacea for stopping the invasion of the Louisiana coastline by the BP/Halliburton Catastrophe. Others disagree with his assessment, and the evidence to date appears to bear them out. I'll leave it to the experts to debate the merits of the berms -- although Jindal scorns scientific expertise in particular -- but the entire notion has had a castles-in-the-air aura about it from the get-go.

Software development (which I do know something about) is not civil engineering, but I'd bet an investment banker's bonus that they share two key principles when it comes to scheduling and delivering:

1. Engineers will provide an overly optimistic delivery date based on confidence in their skills (a confidence that, in my experience, is usually justifiable), a strong desire to develop the project, and the natural optimism that infuses the beginning of any endeavor. However, all of this inevitably results in initial schedule estimates that to succeed require near perfect execution with few unanticipated impediments.
2. If the project has never been tried -- and on this scale, the berms have not been -- then all bets are off, and I mean all bets. The end result, if the project actually reaches completion, is as likely to be a counterproductive boondoggle as it is to accomplish anything positive. And in any case, it will not live up to its advance billing because the decision-makers will cut corners to avoid further delay.

The optimism of the engineers proposing the project is understandable: It's the nature of the beast. But Boob Bob Jindal has an obligation to be skeptical, to drill down (as it were) on the project milestones, to understand the pitfalls and push the engineers to prepare for them, to seek outside expertise, and -- above all -- to inject a note of realism into the proceedings. On these counts, he has failed dismally (although failure implies a degree of effort not evident in Boob Bob's approach to this project).

It's not like he hasn't been warned. Marine scientist Dr. Len Bahr has publicly questioned Jindal's the berm strategy on nine grounds:

1. Absence of science
2. Questionable justification
3. Opportunity cost
4. Environmental cost
5. Changes to natural flow regime: A technical argument that the berms could well suck oil into the estuaries they are designed to protect
6. Lengthy construction time
7. Fragility
8. Dubious benefits
9. Better use of funds

Jindal originally estimated that the berms could be completed within six-month; now, I believe they are talking about nine months. No matter: This project is a minimum of two years out.

Jindal will blame delays on the federal bureaucracy as surely as a liberal governor would blame BP. But the project itself is always the primary source of delays; that, too, is the nature of the beast. In the case of the berms, the likely source of delay is predictable: Boob Bob's Glenn Beck-like disparagement of science will come back to haunt him and the Louisiana coast.

For a project like the berms, marine scientists and ecologists must play an instrumental role in helping the engineers identify and prepare for setbacks. Jindal has dismissed their concerns. When these concerns are inevitably realized, the engineers will have no contingency plan in place or expertise to fall back on. They'll be groping in the dark, with all of the missteps and delays that that implies.

By then, Boob Bob won't care much, as he'll be too busy running for president to worry about something as insignificant as sand berms.

Weekly Address

This week President Obama discusses the multitude of problems and opportunities before the world through the prism of Passover and Easter:

These are two very different holidays with their own very different traditions. But it seems fitting that we mark them both during the same week. For in a larger sense, they are both moments of reflection and renewal. They are both occasions to think more deeply about the obligations we have to ourselves and the obligations we have to one another, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what faith we practice...

Len Bahr has more on LSU's termination of coastal scientist and Hurricane Katrina expert Ivor Van Heerden here. Bahr dismisses the limp lie that Van Heerden lacked experience for his position and adds that

Hurricane Katrina created a number of local and even national heroes, some of whom I am proud to know and Dr. van Heerden is high on that list. If having the cajones to blow the whistle on the most catastrophic and expensive coastal disaster in recent US history is grounds for firing, what can possibly be grounds for advancement?

In a devasting quote from a UC Berkeley Engineering Professor Raymond D. Seed, Bahr also exposes LSU's academic cowardice:

My own University (U.C. Berkeley) was also approached [by the Bush Administration] in an inappropriate manner during that same Winter of 2005-06, but such untoward pressures were simply rebuffed. That, in the end, probably goes right to the heart of what really separates a top-flight university with one of the top Colleges of Engineering in the nation (and the top-rated Department of Civil Engineering in the nation) from a university like LSU.

Academic research often leads the researcher into unknown and controversial areas. He must know that, above all else, that his institution has his back. By bowing to crude threats and dismissing such a leading and distinguished voice, LSU failed Van Heerden, itself, its students, its alumni, its faculty, and the state of Louisiana in the most fundamental way possible...

Gitmo = A loooot of fun...

What's bad for trees is good for Bank of America. For the life of me, I don't know why we should bail out banks who practice usury...